Hard to state exactly what this is as it’s both airport lounge and shop and not, perhaps, the sort of thing that might normally feature on Retail-Week.com.

This is the SSP lounge in Helsinki airport, however, and as well as being the place where you can take the weight off your feet, it also happens to be a store where, unusually, you can buy much of what’s on view.

Which makes it not unlike a series of roomsets in a department store or a furniture store, rather than the anonymous surroundings of an international airport. It probably also means that SSP, the operator of the lounge and the provider of food and drink brands in travel locations such as Burger King, Upper Crust and M&S Simply Food can sell from the lounge – it’s a double whammy.

One of the major points about airport retailing is that time is limited and every retailer that operates in this kind of environment has to regard every other retailer as competition, if for no better reason than if shoppers visit a rival, they will not have time to frequent your store. For this reason, the notion of being able to buy select items from an airport lounge means that the high-spending, select few who enjoy the cosseting luxury that is on offer may not be tempted to decamp onto the main concourse.

Dubbed almost@home, at the heart of this shop/lounge, is a kitchen-style buffet and when potential shoppers are replete, they can consider whether one of the Finnish objects d’art or paintings might make an appropriate gift as they await a flight. This still probably doesn’t fall into the shop category, but it is an interesting departure from the airport retailing norm.