Focus on: Albea's designer style

Travel Designer's team is drawing on its experience across high-end cosmetics and perfume houses to forge new innovations onboard. Julie Baxter looks closer

Amenity kits specialist Travel Designer has its roots in the perfume, cosmetics and oral hygiene sectors. It is a division of the Albéa Group, leaders in primary packaging for these sectors, but for the past 14 years has been building its reputation as a brand within the airline sector too.

This year alone it added four new airline collections to its portfolio with launches for MEA and Thai Airways and on-going collaborations for Air France and KLM. Key to its operation is its in-house Studio 360 with a long tradition of working on promotional activities, bags, boxes and accessories for prestigious houses such as Lancôme, Thierry Mugler, Azzaro and others.

Inspired solutions

The Studio 360 designers take inspiration from the latest fashion and lifestyle trends to create madeto-measure solutions that reflect an airline’s DNA. They study the airline’s brand identity and history closely before starting and Corinne Brand, vp airlines activity at Albéa, says: “Our mission is to make travel a unique experience – we believe every detail matters.”

With 15,000 people in its parent group working for large and small customers in 60 countries across the world, Travel Designer also facilitates a wide range of brand collaborations, focused primarily on authentic brands which can enhance the user experience.

Maxime Ridoux, brand partnership manager, adds: “We are not just looking for a brand name but rather a true customer experience, offering the passenger the chance to try and enjoy a brand they haven’t come across before but can then go on to buy in the retail market. We aim to reflect the airline as a brand, not as a carrier, matching its brand DNA with that of a skincare or fashion partner.” The company offers a full amenities management programme, managing complex projects, coordinating the supply chain, manufacturing and assembling kits and comfort products as well as managing logistics and quality control checks.

Brand adds: “We are committed to sustainability too by supporting assisted employment centres for kitting, using eco-friendly, recycled and Global Organic Textile Standard materials and building a network of reliable and audited partners. In some Air France kits, for example, toothbrush, comb and shoehorn are made from corn starch." •

today, with the era of “me, me, me”, it is all about the story and about giving the passenger a gift.