Where, How and What to Do When our Wallets Get Victimized by the Worth of WHSmithWater

This article probably resonates with people who have ever passed through an airport (at least in

the last 20 years)... It’s well known that the pricing of anything in airports is higher, often much higher than street pricing. Business Insider recently filmed a video about this exact topic - US airports often had markup restrictions on items within the airports, based on their original “street pricing,” though the prices they were based on were often already inflated from the prices for those items you could find in the airport’s locality. “In 2024, US airports generated over $1 billion of revenue from purchases like $6 bottled water, $27 beers, and $10 Chex Mix,” stated Business Insider. Those are impressive figures, but I was curious if this was happening in the rest of the world.

I originally started research for this project in August, as I did a bunch of travelling at the end of

the month. To keep it concise, I have only looked deep into airport pricing at Budapest Liszt Ferenc

Airport, as it is an airport with a modest and consistent flow of people. When there, I noted the pricing of the following items, and the stores where I found them:

Memories of Hungary - tic-tac fresh mints 18g - 599 HUF

Memories of Hungary - Orbit spearmint gum 14g -799 HUF

Memories of Hungary - Zewa Sofis Tissues - 399 HUF

Memories of Hungary - 500ml of water - 799 HUF

Memories of Hungary - 500ml of Coca Cola - 899 HUF

Memories of Hungary - Lipton iced tea - 849 HUF

Memories of Hungary - Milli iced coffee - 999 HUF

Memories of Hungary - Sio Mango Smoothie 250ml - 1299 HUF

WHSmith - Haribo Starmix 80g - 990 HUF

WHSmith - JBL Go 4 speaker - 17995 HUF

WHSmith - JBL Clip 5 speaker - 26995 HUF

Heinemann Duty Free - Manner Neapolitan Wafers 300g - 2610 HUF

Heinemann Duty Free - Lindt Dubai Style Chocolate 145g - 6749 HUF

Then, I cross referenced these prices with ones from Tesco Hungary’s webshop, and calculated the markups of the items’ prices at the airport:

Tic-tac fresh mints 18g - 319 HUF 87.8% Markup

Orbit spearmint gum 14g - 349 HUF 128.9% Markup

Zewa Sofis Tissues - 88 HUF/Package 353.4% Markup

500ml of water - 199 HUF (with bottle deposit) 301.5% Markup

500ml of Coca Cola - 449 HUF (with bottle deposit) 100.2% Markup

Lipton iced tea - 509 HUF (with bottle deposit) 66.8% Markup

Milli iced coffee - 399 HUF 150.4% Markup

Sio Mango Smoothie 250ml - 979 HUF (with bottle deposit) 32.7% Markup

Haribo Starmix 80g - 490 HUF 102% Markup

JBL Go 4 speaker - 20399 HUF (from Mediamarkt) 11.8% Markdown

JBL Clip 5 speaker - 27899 HUF (from Mediamarkt) 3.2% Markdown

Manner Neapolitan Wafers 300g - 1996 HUF 30.8% Markup

Lindt Dubai Style Chocolate 145g - 4699 HUF (from the Lindt HU website) 43.6% Markup.

Often, the smaller the item, the more the product was marked up in price. Water, gum and tissues were great examples of this. Though there are a few things you can do to save yourself these costs. You can always bring a bottle to refill, or drink from the fountains provided, and you can always bring your own snacks and toiletries. Notably too, the speakers were actually marked down at the airport, compared to Mediamarkt. So perhaps in some cases, airports are good places to make larger purchases (though that highly depends on the airport and destination you are going to).