Despite a global 0.5 per cent increase in spirits consumption in domestic markets, the travel retail spirits market shrank by 3.3 per cent last year, shedding 750,000 cases altogether.

The trend is revealed in the latest Top 100 Travel Retail Rankings released by media publication IWSR.

“This overall contraction is reflected in the largely negative performance by many of the travel-retail sector’s Top 100 brands last year,” says the IWSR’s annual Travel Retail Top 100 report.

“In fact, many of the sector’s largest brands were most keenly affected by its downturn, with the share of the Top 100 brands falling from 83 per cent in 2014 to 82.6 per cent last year.” 

Four of the top five leading travel-retail brands had volume losses over the year ranging from 7000 to more than 100,000 cases. Most of these losses stemmed from the Americas and Asia-Pacific duty-free/travel-retail regions, which respectively declined by 6.3 and 1.3 per cent overall.  

IWSR has publicly revealed only the top 10 ranking brands, with the full list available by subscription only through its website. The top 10 are led by Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniel’s, Chivas Regal and Absolut.

While Scotch whisky dominates 27 of the top 100 brands – the most of any single category – half of these brands experienced a drop in travel-retail sales last year.

Exceptions to the trend were largely malt Scotch whiskies, such as Beam Suntory’s Laphroaig, Diageo’s The Singleton, Edrington’s The Macallan and William Grant’s The Balvenie. This mirrors the domestic markets, with malts outperforming blended Scotch varieties as consumer interest soars in the segment’s high production values.  

It was a mixed performance for the travel-retail Cognac market as well, with sales down in Asia-Pacific and Europe while marginal growth was posted across the Americas. Similarly, of the five Cognac brands to appear among the Top 100 travel-retail spirits brands, Hennessy and Martell posted overall growth while Camus, Courvoisier and Remy Martin saw their volumes decline.

Gin was one of the few spirits categories to build extra volume in travel retail, growing by 5.7 per cent overall. All five gin brands in the Top 100 improved their positioning.

Vodka, the second-largest contributor to the Top 100 travel retail spirits rankings after Scotch, also had a mixed performance for leading brands.  

New entrants into the Top 100 list include Bundaberg rum, Fireball Cinnamon Whisky and Wild Turkey Bourbon. These brands all had double-digit growth over the year, while brands such as Becherovka, Bowmore and Drambuie fell by the wayside.