Denver International Airport officials vowed Wednesday to revamp DIA’s concessions program after acknowledging that it ranks low in the opinion of air travelers.
Food and beverage concessions at DIA “scored very poorly” in passenger surveys, said Patrick Heck, the airport’s acting deputy manager for revenue management, in a briefing for Denver City Council members.
Heck noted that a recent J.D. Power and Associates customer-preference survey of major U.S. airports found DIA “toward the bottom for both retail and food and beverage.”
Other surveys commissioned by DIA confirmed Power’s findings and said “concessions ranked as the lowest-scoring aspect of the different components of the travel experience at DIA,” Heck told council members.
In overhauling DIA’s concessions program, Heck said the airport plans to:
Current concession leases at DIA average nearly 10 years, and 70 percent of concessionaires have been there since the airport opened in 1995, Heck said.
Nationally, the average tenure of airport concessions is about six years, and the trend at airports across the country is for shorter leases that offer chances for new concepts in retail and food and beverage.
DIA plans to limit the lease terms of fast-food outlets, restaurant/bars and coffee shops to seven years and cap the leases of newsstands and most specialty retail shops at five years.
Councilman Charlie Brown asked Heck how the airport reconciles the demand for stores of national brands like Starbucks with the desire to promote local coffee-shop brands.
There is room for both at DIA, Heck said.
“We’re probably short on coffee now,” he said.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
