Same Product, Double the Price: What a New Index Reveals About Duty-Free Shopping

I run Echolution, a travel-retail media and data agency, and we've just launched a live Duty-Free Price Index comparing spirits prices across 15 major hub airports (the world's 10 busiest plus key European travel-retail hubs) normalised into USD/EUR/GBP so the prices are genuinely comparable.

First thing that jumped out: the exact same 1L bottle of Smirnoff Vodka costs $10.10 at Dallas/Fort Worth and $22.07 at Lisbon. That's a 119% difference for an identical product. Across the spirits with enough like-for-like coverage, the average cheapest-to-priciest gap between airports is still 58%.

It's a live, filterable directory. Browse by airport, switch currency, or find the cheapest airport for a specific bottle. We're tracking 20 spirits SKUs right now (whisky, vodka, gin, rum, cognac, Irish cream) and plan to expand into other duty-free categories over time.

Take a look at: www.echolution.com/duty-free-price-index/

We would love to get feedback. Is an index like this needed? Useful? If useful what other areas could be added? Features? We plan to cover beauty, fragrance in the coming months.

Really interesting data. Duty-free is often automatically associated with “better value,” but comparisons like this show why travelers should still check prices before buying. It would also be interesting to see how these differences change across product categories, not just airports.