Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Now, as many of you may be packing up and jetting off in the coming weeks, it's time to chat about the airport golden hour, the 60 minutes that you spend or so between checking in and heading to your flight. And this time is tactically used by the airport you're in to make sure that you spend as much money as you can while you wait to get on your flight.
Conor Pope is with me, consumer affairs correspondent with the Irish Times. One of the holiday traps, isn't it, Conor, that you're warning us about?
Well, warning and traps are strong words there, Clare, I have to say. It is a trap. In some respect. The Golden Hour, when I was a kid, the Golden Hour was 60 minutes that Larry Gogan used to play tunes from the 1960s. But it has become something different in an airport context. Now, obviously, airports are in the business of transporting people to and from places all over the world.
And in the main, they're excellent at that. I mean... You know, people like to complain about air travel, but it's still a remarkable achievement that so many people use airports all over the world all the time and mostly get to their destinations on a timely basis with their baggage alongside them. But the other key part of an airport's operation is making money from its shopping.
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Chapter 2: What is the airport 'Golden Hour' and why is it significant?
That's not because the airports want to make us feel good. What they want is they want us to feel more inclined to shop with them. And when we're arrested a shopper who's just had a lovely neck massage, we walk blissed out straight into the arms of a perfume salesman and we're delighted to spend money with them.
And then, of course, you know, the thing that I, if you go to Dublin Airport, they have all sorts of mad stuff that's being sold there. you know they're like little sheep and iron jumpers and suitcases and all this stuff and what they know is that people in airports If they're heading home, they might go, I forgot to buy a present for Joni or Mary or Tommy.
So they buy this stuff and it's almost always, always bad value for money. And there's nothing worse when it comes to bad value for money. If you're in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, they have all these lovely little boxes of Edam cheese and the like. You could wait and go to Tesco and buy the same cheese for a quarter of the price. It's not the same though.
It doesn't taste like the airport, you know.
Chapter 3: How do airports encourage spending during the 'Golden Hour'?
And that's why, if you ever notice, Toblerones seem to do a roaring trade in airports. Now, I don't see Toblerones being wildly popular in Ireland. There's no disrespect to the chocolate. I love Toblerones.
I love them.
And I love airport Toblerones. And my wife is the same. We have to get a Toblerone when we go to the airport. I was like, sure, we're just going to be looking at it for the next three weeks. Let's wait till we get to the destination and buy some exotic Spanish or Italian chocolate instead.
And the other sneaky trick that airports do, and you don't see it so much in Dublin, but you do see it in a lot of airports like Gatwick, When you arrive in and you're looking at the boarding gates or the notice boards announcing where the boarding gates are, you know your flight's in 90 minutes.
Chapter 4: What are common holiday traps at airports?
And you say, oh, what gate are we on? Because we'll head straight to our gate. Because going to the gate quickly is the one antidote to spending money that you don't need to spend at the airport.
Yeah, because there's nothing at the gate. You might get a sandwich and a coffee.
That's it. There might be a newsagent. But you're not going to be spending 180 quid on newspapers, sadly. So you look and say, we'll go straight to the gate. At least that's what I say and my family are going, no chance, we're going shopping. But anyway, you say, we're going to go straight to the gate and you say, gate announcement in 60 minutes. And you're going, what's that about?
Now, bear in mind that the airlines fly to and from the same airports every single day, sometimes 10, 12 times a day. So the airlines know exactly what gate they're going to. The airport knows exactly what gate you have to go to.
But they don't want to tell you until 13 minutes before you're supposed to be there because they want to make sure that you stay in the shopping area and you don't leave the shopping area to go to your gate. And the other thing they tell you, and they do this in Dublin airports, and it is very helpful, they say things like, you know, seven minutes to gate. Yeah, I find that helpful. Yeah.
I do, but they're not really doing it exclusively to be helpful. They're also doing it to remind you that if you've got 15 minutes and they say seven minutes, well, I've got eight minutes to buy the Brazilian bum bum cream. Tell me about it. We have boxes of this stuff.
So do I. Loads of it. I don't know what all the numbers mean. I don't know what any of it means, but I know that if you are, you know, around 10 or 11, you need a lot of it. You need a lot of it to survive.
And the thing to remember is that all of the stuff that's being sold in the airport can be bought either in the place you're just leaving or the place you're just heading to, and probably for less.
Listen, I think you're such a bad humbug. Because the last time I was in the airport, you're in great form. I've been looking forward to this for ages. You deserve a little treat. So I got myself a bottle of perfume the last time I was in the airport. And I was measured about it. I didn't get the big one. I got the half-sized one, delighted with myself. And it was in the bag.
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Chapter 5: How do airport layouts influence shopping behavior?
It just works. I don't know what it is. Swiss triangular chocolate. We love it as we travel.
And it's almost like we think when we see the Toblerones that, oh, gee, I can't get them anywhere else in the world except to this airport. You're in Tesco. They're in Don's. They're in my local shop.
You've made me want to go away now. It's so exciting, isn't it? To go somewhere.
It is. Conor, thanks so much. I'm looking forward to it too.
I've enjoyed that. If anyone sees my perfume, I'd love to have it back because I can't face replacing it.
I'm just not there yet.
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