Another daft novice question

There has always been a tradition of offering "special deals" or exclusive products at airports, just like with perfumes or make-up. Another common practice is to launch it in duty free first (e.g. Laphroaig Triple Wood) and make it available in regular shops later on.

Usually there's nothing particularly good or bad about these whiskies, some of them are worth looking for, others are worse than the normal expressions. I'm afraid it's just a marketing trick.

I wonder if it's a good way to "trial" a whisky, given that a) you don't have to focus a particular country so much (each one has different "preferences" generally), b) duty-free buyers are often looking for "interesting" presents, and c) duty-free buyers often look for whisky.

There's also that thing that the bottles tend to be a bit bigger (often 1 litre), so maybe they can shift more for the same number of sales?

Always worth talking to the sales people though, they usually (not always) know what they're talking about, and often don't mind giving you a few free tastings as well - I'm sure I've been quite merry going on to a late morning flight more than once ... ;)

I was talking to someone recently (and, predictably, can't remember who) from the whisky biz who said that Travel Retail is largely a question of distribution - the producer sells to one point, and then they arrange getting it around to their network themselves.

If a bottling is Travel Retail Only then it makes it impossible to do a high street comparison on your smartphone to see if you're getting a good deal or not, because you won't be able to get that bottling via the normal channels.

Travel Retail Exclusives are good for the prestige image of the channel - something which I presume they're desperately trying to maintain a hold of.

@scribe Last time I had to fly international I was tired, frustrated, irritated, and overall just about ready to blow my stack. Then I walked thru a duty free shop that had not 2 or 3, but (from memory) 10 or 12 expressions available for tasting.

Very quickly turned into the single best day I have ever spent in an airport!

One thing I will say about duty free is not to assume that just because it is duty free you are going to get a good deal. A lot of duty free shops cash in on people making that assumption, and end up not actualy being any cheaper than the prices you will get at any major distributor.

Until 1999 the duty free shops basically sold on price but since their tax free status (at least within the EU) was abolished they have had to find other ways to compete - hence special whiskies distilled for them. And as scribe writes above, many of their customers have high levels of disposable income and are looking for unusal presents.