from sybarites.com
Guests pay for days yet remember minutes. The peak end rule explains why a stay often lives or dies on one high moment and the day of departure. What works, what fails, and how to design the arc so memory carries your brand home.
Airports, resorts, and luxury boutiques don’t just sell products. They sell time — scarce, abundant, distorted, or timeless. This essay explores how time shapes shopping behaviour.
Retail has doubled down on experience design to win back emotion and attention. But when design becomes control, engagement collapses into performance.
That overpriced chocolate bar at Gate 14 wasn’t about hunger—it was about control. In this in-depth essay, we explore how Mood Repair Theory explains airport retail behaviour, especially in high-stress domestic terminals, and what airports can learn from global best practice to meet travellers’ emotional needs.