The rollout across UK airports and rail stations lets WHSmith adjust prices in real time, a shift that could influence how travel retailers manage demand swings.
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WHSmith has partnered with Solum, a UK digital transformation firm, to install electronic shelf labels across its travel stores in airports and railway stations, the companies said.
Electronic shelf labels, or ESLs, let retailers update prices from a central system, replacing paper tags. In travel locations, foot traffic surges during holidays and slumps at off-peak times. Dynamic pricing helps match inventory to demand without staff swapping tags. A store in a busy terminal can raise the price of a bestselling novel during a travel rush and lower it during a lull.
WHSmith operates hundreds of outlets in transport hubs, selling books, snacks, and convenience goods. The technology eliminates the labor cost of manual price changes. That matters in high-rent spaces where every minute of staff time counts. It also opens the door to promotional strategies tied to flight delays or train cancellations, though the companies did not detail those uses.
For Solum, the contract provides a reference deployment in travel retail, a segment that has been slower than grocery to adopt ESLs. Solum supplies digital signage and shelf-edge displays. A successful rollout at WHSmith could speed adoption among rival travel vendors. ESL adoption has been driven by large grocery chains in Europe and the US. Travel retailers face different constraints: shorter customer dwell times and the need to coordinate with concession contracts. Solum's platform integrates with retailers' pricing systems to address some of these challenges.
Suppliers could gain real-time data on which products sell at which price points in different terminals, data that can inform assortment decisions. That feedback loop is less developed in travel retail than in standard grocery.
No financial terms were disclosed. WHSmith did not specify a rollout schedule.
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