Duty Free Project

Hamish

I am launching a new website that will be part of my [www.professormediagroup.com](http://www.professormediagroup.com) that will be focused on the duty free industry and it will be consumer focused b2c as compared to other existing sites that are more b2b.  This will hopefully be tied to our new duty free competition for initially liquor as we do already for my existing international competitions [www.internationabeveragecompetitions.com](http://www.internationabeveragecompetitions.com)    Hopefully in the coming years to add additional verticals in the competition…fragrance, makeup etc, tobacco etc…

The goal is to create an ai agent scrubbing program to continuously update our pricing database so that we can give daily and or weekly pricing updates to the searchable database.  Therefore a traveler can compare the pricing of Johnnie Walker Blue 1 liter in Heathrow or Buenos Aires or Hong Kong to see what the pricing is as well as does it make sense to buy it where they fly out of ie JFK in New York or at their destination ie Heathrow in London.   

The database should be for everything sold in the duty free location…liquor, cosmetics, makeup, perfume, chocolate, tobacco, etc….I do not know how many skus/items there will [be..it](http://be..it) could be a couple hundred or low 1-2 thousands of items. 

Additional feature of the database would be able to add medal recognition to the database entry/sku    So we can tag and or add the medal image from a win in our competition

The big duty free operations have online stores listing their products and pricing…there are numerous websites around the world that are hosted by the large companies that own them with each duty free location having their own website and pricing

Example of sites  
[https://london-heathrow.worlddutyfree.com/](https://london-heathrow.worlddutyfree.com/)  
[https://athens.shopdutyfree.com/en/](https://athens.shopdutyfree.com/en/)  
[https://www.heinemann-shop.com/en/global/airport-shopping-at-home](https://www.heinemann-shop.com/en/global/airport-shopping-at-home)  
[https://www.ssgdfs.com/en/main/initMain](https://www.ssgdfs.com/en/main/initMain)  
[www.aena.es](http://www.aena.es)  
[https://www.ssgdfs.com/en](https://www.ssgdfs.com/en) 

We would also want to incorporate each location into a global interactive map so when you click the exact location ie Heathrow you can go to that site as well as a database link to compare pricing.  I realize there are existing map services like [https://www.mapbox.com/pricing](https://www.mapbox.com/pricing) that we may use   

I have not determined whether the site will be on a wordpress or squarespace platform at this time but expect to make a decision about this in the coming weeks.

I am also open to any ideas or suggestions to make this a better solution and option to our potential visitors to our site.  

Cheers  
Adam

**UPDATE 08/18/2026**

Hi Adam,

I'll respond in here just to keep it all in one place. I ran a quick proof of concept, and I'll paste the findings below.

Very buildable. Obviously, as you add more SKUs, the different pages scrape and increase. Essentially, it found that on some pages it has got up to 40 prices, so you get a lot of value from the single credit. You'll see the pricing for fire crawl, and there's enterprise pricing that goes up. If you ended up spending hundreds of dollars a month, then you could build your own version of it.

In terms of the site, I would host it and put the app in Replit so you then have ultimate control over it, both yourself or through your VA. It would then incorporate the scraping and everything, so it would all be in the one. Otherwise, you end up having one app to do the scraping and the website somewhere else. You don't need space or WordPress anymore. You can build it all in Replit.com.

If we did it, I'd be happy to build all that, get you up and running, and then hand the project over to you and take it over from there. You would just need to pay the firecrawl credits on top, and then there's, depending on how busy the website is, $20 a month or $40 a month for the hosting. You get more power than WordPress and Squarespace. 

**Duty Free Pricing Database**

Proof of Concept — Automated Price Collection

Seatless Software · 18 August 2026

We ran a live proof of concept against the duty-free store websites listed in your project outline, to answer two questions: can the product and pricing data be collected automatically, and what would continuous collection cost to run. Short answer: yes, cleanly — and the running cost is modest. The detail is below.

# **1\. What we pulled, and from where**

We used your own example — Johnnie Walker Blue Label 1L — and retrieved it from three of the sites in your outline using Firecrawl, the commercial scraping service we propose to use.

| Site (URL) | Product found | Price | Also captured |
| :---- | :---- | :---- | :---- |
| london-heathrow.worlddutyfree.com | Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky 1L | £272.95 (20cl variant £54.59) | Member (Club Avolta) price, availability, brand, images, per-litre price |
| athens.shopdutyfree.com | Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky 1L | €300.00 | Member price, stock status, SKU, awards, ABV, tasting notes, currency conversions |
| heinemann-shop.com | Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky 40% 1L (gift pack) | €309.99 | Pick-up airports (Budapest, Frankfurt, Vienna), category, brand |

*Every field needed for the comparison database is present in the pages in structured, machine-readable form — no guesswork or manual re-keying.*

## **Example: the full record for one product (Athens)**

| Field | Value extracted |
| :---- | :---- |
| Brand | Johnnie Walker |
| Product | Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky |
| Size / ABV | 1L / 40% |
| Price | €300.00 (Club Avolta member price €300.00) |
| SKU | 2184884 |
| Availability | Available in store only |
| Awards | IWSC Blended Scotch 2019 Gold; San Francisco World Spirits 2013 Best Blended Scotch |
| Country / region | United Kingdom / Blended |
| Style | Full Bodied & Smoky |
| Currency conversions shown | A$489.39 · £256.45 · CHF 282.03 · US$347.55 |
| Product images | 8 high-resolution images on the store CDN |

*The awards field is worth noting: the stores already publish competition medals per product, which dovetails with your plan to badge database entries with your own competition medals.*

# **2\. Key findings**

•     **One platform, many airports.** Heathrow and Athens run on the same platform (Avolta, formerly Dufry) and share identical product IDs and page structures. One collector built for Avolta covers its whole airport network — dozens of locations — and matching the same product across those airports is automatic via the shared ID.

•     **Prices come in bulk.** A single category page (e.g. "Whisky") lists prices for 40 products at a time. A full price refresh of a 2,000-item location takes only \~50 page fetches, which is what makes daily updates affordable.

•     **The data is structured.** Product name, price, currency, stock status and brand are embedded in each page as structured data, so collection is reliable and repeatable rather than dependent on page layouts staying the same.

•     **Sizes need care.** Where one page sells multiple sizes (Heathrow sells Blue Label in 1L and 20cl), each size needs one extra page fetch to capture separately. Handled in the design and included in the cost figures below.

•     **Two sites still to verify.** The Korean site (ssgdfs.com) uses heavier page technology and needs a follow-up test; aena.es is a directory of shops rather than a store, so it plays a different role (locations for the map rather than prices). Neither changes the overall picture.

# **3\. What continuous collection costs**

Firecrawl charges per page fetched (a "credit"), with monthly plans. We measured actual credit consumption in the proof of concept rather than estimating it.

## **Measured cost per operation**

| Operation | Credits | What you get |
| :---- | :---- | :---- |
| Category listing page | 1 | Prices for \~40 products at once |
| Product detail page | 1 | Full record incl. sizes, awards, images |
| URL discovery (finding all product pages) | 1 per page | Used when building the catalogue |
| Failed requests | 0 | Not charged |

## **Indicative monthly running cost**

Assuming \~2,000 products per location — the top of your estimate:

| Scenario | Credits / month | Firecrawl plan |
| :---- | :---- | :---- |
| 20 locations, weekly price refresh | \~4,300 | Hobby — \~US$16/mo |
| 20 locations, daily price refresh | \~30,000 | Standard — \~US$83–99/mo |
| 50 locations, daily refresh \+ size variants | \~75,000 | Standard — \~US$99/mo |
| One-time catalogue build (20 locations, full detail) | \~40,000 once | Fits within one month of Standard |

**The cost driver is how often prices refresh and how many airports are covered — not how many products are in the database. Daily updates across 20–50 airports sit at roughly US$100/month in collection costs.**

# **4\. Overall**

The proof of concept confirms the core of the project is feasible with off-the-shelf collection infrastructure at a modest running cost. The comparison database, the medal badging, and the interactive map are all well supported by the data available. Suggested next step: a short call to agree the launch list of airports and the refresh cadence, which are the two decisions that shape both the build and the monthly running cost.