In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices: Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice Chairman & CEO, Dubai Duty Free : Moodie Davitt Report

There’s something that’s goin’ round, that’s shutting our borders down
It’s a bad time for our sick and our old
CNN’s nightly lullaby, tells of hundreds more that’ve died
I shut off the TV and think all alone, how long can this go on? – Jeff Orson, Pray

Colm McLoughlin: Determined to create a ‘resuccess’ for Dubai Duty Free

Welcome to In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices, our podcast series in which we speak to industry executives around the world to see how they and their businesses are coping with the COVID-19 crisis.

Today we revisit the man and the company who featured in our very first In Crisis podcast way back on 20 March. In COVID-19 terms, that seems a lifetime ago doesn’t it? That man is Colm McLoughlin and the company is, of course, Dubai Duty Free, the world’s biggest single retailer airport operation.

When we last spoke to Colm, the only traffic going through DXB – Dubai International Airport – was transit. But things were about to get a lot worse. The COVID-19 outbreak accelerated in Dubai and both traffic and sales ground to a halt.

The toll on Dubai Duty Free has been severe. Of 3,500 staff tested for COVID-19, 240 were diagnosed positive and 24 remain in isolation. Business to date is down 56% year-on-year, a figure that actually looks better than it is given a decent start to the year in January and February. Slowly, slowly, though, things are starting to look up. Planes are flying again, shops are open. On Tuesday, Dubai Duty Free took around AED600,000 in sales, or around US$163,000. Not bad but not a patch on the equivalent kind of day last year when the retailer would have expected to generate around AED20 million or US$5.4 million.

But it’s a start and Colm McLoughlin says it’s time to look forward, to be positive. He certainly is, and he’s determined to make Dubai Duty Free a ‘resuccess’. Nicely put. Martin Moodie caught up with him by Zoom to see how it all was going. Look out for the full written version of this interview in The Moodie Davitt Magazine, out in coming days.

Footnote: Dubai Duty Free will be turning out in strength at the Moodie Davitt Virtual Travel Retail Expo in October, says Colm McLoughlin during the podcast. “Congratulations on your initiative with regard to your Virtual Expo. I keep on reading about all the support you are getting and I want to tell you that Dubai Duty Free is 100% behind it.”

[Click on the icon above to listen to the audio podcast of our interview with Colm McLoughlin or that below for the video version]