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Lancôme opens luxury retreat space and cafe in Doha airport

Café de la Rose by Lancôme and Qatar Duty Free in Doha, Qatar

Qatar – Lancôme has unveiled Café de la Rose inside Doha’s Hamad International Airport, its first travel retail café and only the second globally.

Named in reference to the flower that appears in the company’s branding and created in partnership with Qatar Duty Free, the 28-seat café immerses travellers in Lancôme’s signature pink aesthetic and includes olfactory touches, such as ceramic oud bouquets at each table.

Customers receive complimentary skincare treatments, can explore the Absolue skincare line with on-site experts and take away a personalised ‘scent passport’.

But the experience extends beyond beauty: French pastry house Lenôtre has collaborated with World Pastry Champion Étienne Leroy to craft five exclusive desserts, including a reimagined feuille d’automne and the Rose Agora, featuring pear-and-lychee.

Drinks including coffee, tea, fresh juices and champagne are served, marking out the space as a refined retreat for travellers. As Lancôme continues to blur the lines between retail, hospitality and wellbeing, Café de la Rose reflects a growing demand for sensorial luxury in transit spaces.

Read our new report, Scenario-based Airport Beauty which analyses how beauty brands in Asia are targeting Chinese travellers with products and services that are customised to an individual’s skin and their onward destination.

Strategic opportunity

Develop multisensory experiences in airports and train stations that blend product discovery, personalised services and hospitality, thereby turning waiting and layovers into immersive brand touchpoints that boost engagement and loyalty among travelling consumers

Foresight Friday: Rose Coffey, senior foresight analyst

Every Friday, The Future Laboratory team offers an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, senior foresight analyst Rose Coffey reflects on the state of fashion and where the system is heading.

: As fashion month draws to a close, questions about the health of the industry feel more urgent than ever. Climate instability, geopolitical tension and slowing global demand are intensifying scrutiny of a system long associated with excess.

In a recent Business of Fashion article, Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto voiced his frustration: ‘Fashion has become a joke. It’s all about money. The major companies of fashion, they’re like kids playing kid soccer, just running after the ball. They’re not thinking about their customers.’

Yet, I still believe there are glimmers of hope. At the British Fashion Council, new CEO Laura Weir is reshaping the agenda, ushering in investments in emerging talent through expanded scholarships and the scrapping of designer fees to show.

At a more grassroots level, designer Connor Ives has turned protest into impact: since launching the Protect the Dolls T-shirt last season in response to the Trump administration’s rollback of transgender rights, more than 14,000 units have been sold – raising over £900,000 ($1.3m, €1.1m) for Trans Lifeline, an organisation that provides financial services to the transgender community (source: New York Times).

: Meanwhile, cultural institutions are also interrogating fashion’s direction. At London’s Barbican, Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion marks the gallery’s first fashion show in eight years. It features work from over 60 renowned houses alongside emerging designers from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

One of my favourite fashion historians, Caroline Evans, published a seminal book in 2003. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness explored fashion’s relationship to death, decay and collective anxiety.

Today, these themes are resurfacing, with intensity. The exhibition highlights a growing rejection of glossy AI-generated imagery and hyper-polished beauty tropes in favour of rawness, imperfection and even dirt.

I particularly enjoyed the recent coverage in Dazed, which spotlighted the work of designers who are subverting aesthetic norms and embracing the unpolished.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming macrotrend report on this theme. In the meantime, you can explore more insights from our Beauty and Fashion sectors.

Dirty Looks installation view, Barbican Art Gallery. © David Parry/Barbican Art Gallery

Quote of the week

‘I feel like dirt in our clothes actually holds a huge element of our humanity, and also remnants of our past. It can add a very intimate feeling that perhaps, as a society, we’re moving away from, particularly with the integration of technology and AI’

Michaela Stark (source: Dazed)

Stat: Americans turn to travel to connect with loved ones

Zulal Wellness Resort by Chiva-Som, Qatar

US – A new survey from Hyatt’s Inclusive Collection reveals Americans are craving more meaningful time with loved ones, and travel is emerging as a key solution. The Time Rich Report found that 82% of people think that they aren’t spending enough quality time with those who matter most, while 62% view travel as a form of quality time.

More than four in five parents (86%) say they lack sufficient time with their children, often spending nearly as many hours on devices as with them. Couples also feel the pinch: even though 84% say that shared trips have lasting positive effects, 31% report that they don’t get enough time together. Notably, even planning a trip has wellbeing benefits, with 50% of respondents reporting that doing so boosts their mood.

As travel becomes an increasing priority for people around the world, our latest macrotrend, Optimised Odysseys, tracks how travel has entered an age in which every element must be optimised, from planning to presence, to deliver truly purposeful, personalised and participatory experiences.

Strategic opportunity

Time is increasingly being framed as the ultimate luxury for consumers. Consider how your business can develop products, services and experiences that maximise meaningful connections and help people to reclaim time, whether through travel, wellness or digital tools