Season's greetings

2024 has been a productive and exciting year for Pragma, with projects taking us all over the world, including India, North America, Europe, Asia and The Middle East.

This year we’ve been working ever more closely with our sister company, Benoy, the leading international firm of architects and creative commercial designers, on many new mixed-use, leisure, and retail-led developments. It is a powerful combination, providing data-driven market analysis, insights, and commercial strategies to inform their award-winning design projects around the world.

Our Impact
It has been fantastic to see the renewed confidence and ambition across both the downtown and airport sectors, with many notable developments and concept openings setting new standards for customer experience and design innovation - the F&B sector in particular, raising the bar.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in participating at the Moodie Davitt Report’s 2024 Airport Food & Beverage (FAB) Conference and Awards in California earlier in the year, where it was excellent to see so many of the client partners and projects that Pragma has supported over the years, receive awards and deserved industry recognition for their F&B programmes. 

Qatar Duty Free at Hamad International Airport captured the ultimate award of Airport Food & Beverage Offer of the year, along with many other accolades. London Luton was the regional award winner for Europe, and the impressive Bob Marley’s One Love Restaurant operated by Margaritaville Caribbean Group in Montego Bay, Jamaica, achieved Airport Restaurant Design of the Year and Casual Dining Concept of the Year.

Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru continues to set impressive new standards across its lounge and F&B programme, and also serves a powerful reminder that the impact of our business has the potential to reach far beyond the conventional metric of revenue generation. The Mitti Café Founder and CEO Alina Alam received a humanitarian award for the incredible work that the brand is doing to empower economic independence and dignity for vulnerable communities – a concept that surely should be present in every commercial development around the world. 

Beyond the world of airports, our property proposition continues to go from strength to strength, driven by the powerful leadership of our directors, Andrew McVicker and Patrick Cox. We have been supporting a fascinating variety of asset typologies, investors, and developers around the world, in creating relevant, inviting, and commercially sustainable developments that have a clear proposition for their target audience. This has included projects for University College London, assisting on developing the F&B strategy across their campus; Etihad Rail, supporting on the commercial strategy across the station network; Oldham Council, in reviewing the evolving customer demand profiles and trading opportunity; and Centre:MK, in identifying performance trends and market dynamics.

We have been fortunate to be involved in a number of high-profile cutting edge mixed-use projects in the Kingdon of Saudi Arabia, where the ambition and focus of the 2030 Saudi Vision is the driving catalyst behind the creation of what will be some of the most impressive and innovative new projects around the world.

Our Insights
We continue to provide our clients and contacts with valuable data and market intelligence from our experiences and observations. This includes our weekly Pragmatist, and white papers including Commercial Strategy for Mixed-Use Masterplan. We also published the results of our second Pulse Global Survey, our valuable new bi-annual survey of consumer behaviours across the key global markets of China, India, the USA, UK, and GCC. This survey is an important influence on our work, ensuring we help our clients deliver exceptional commercial spaces and assets across the globe, founded on critical insight into consumer behaviours.

We ran several webinars in 2024 including two new webinars in November: Spending Habits at the Airport which covers the results of Pragma's latest passenger survey and What Price Leisure? which looks at the transformative impact leisure can bring to schemes and performance. We also launched our new website this year.

Our People
Above all, along with our wonderful client partners, it is our team that makes Pragma an excellent place to work, and I am continually inspired by the creativity and innovation shown in their impressive capabilities. We strive to invest behind their ambition, and we were delighted to promote Mukhriz Mustamir and Soham Nayak to senior analysts based on their outstanding work this year. Diya Iravane joined us as a new analyst and we have also been joined by two new consultants: Ksenai Chernulich who joins us from Strategy Partners and Strelka KB, and Rebecca Skeete who joins us from Landsec – they both bring impressive technical skill sets and market experience in real estate strategy and commercial planning, to further elevate the quality of our output and support for clients.

We look forward to more exciting opportunities in 2025 and beyond, to support our colleagues and clients around the world, and are optimistic that our collective endeavour will continue to create positive impact for the communities and customers we serve.

In the meantime, we wish you all a healthy and happy holiday period, and successful New Year!

Alex Avery
CEO