In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices: Sunil Tuli on the need for personal responsibility

Sunil Tuli: “Business is suffering like never before. We have to hold on; we have to wait for it to go away. It’s a matter of time and a matter of every person in every country being responsible and we will get over this.”

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

Today we talk to Sunil Tuli, Group Chief Executive Officer of King Power Group (Hong Kong), a much-respected veteran of the travel retail sector. Tuli has seen many regional and international crises but, like his peers, has not experienced one of this severity.

Speaking to The Moodie Davitt Report from his family home in Singapore, Tuli said: “Business is suffering like never before – we’ve never seen anything like this before. We have to hold on; we have to wait for it to go away, we’ve got to take intense precautions to make sure we can contain this thing. It will go away. It’s a matter of time and a matter of every person in every country being responsible and we will get over this.


[Click on the image to hear Sunil Tuli’s interview with Martin Moodie]

“The economic impact of this disease is going to last longer than the disease itself”

“Restrictions and more border controls have been brought in, both in Singapore and Hong Kong. Flights have been reduced drastically so the result is that business at the airports has suffered – for us and everyone else. We are reducing the number of hours or even closing down some of our shops for a certain period of time.

“We are not laying off staff but obviously we’re taking other cost-cutting measures like no-pay leave or reducing the number of hours to get over this period because business has crashed completely, with Singapore Airlines announcing a reduction of 96% of their flights. There are no transits allowed and no non-residents are allowed into the country. So, measures like this are obviously going to affect our business and every other tourism-related business, such as retail and hospitality.”

Tuli also warned against the growing tide of Sinophobia seen in many western countries. “We have to be very careful,” he said. “The economic impact of this disease is going to last longer than the disease itself. We’ve been talking about Chinese visitors to every part of the world being the most important customers – not just for duty free but for hospitality, other retail and leisure – for the last few years. Today, if you start discriminating against them, when the time is right and they start travelling again they will not go to countries where they are not welcome.”

Commenting on the rising health crisis in his homeland of India, Tuli expressed deep concern about the mounting COVID-19 tally, given the size and density of population, often questionable hygiene levels, and in many cases insufficient medical facilities. “If it spreads in the slums and the villages etc, it is going to spread like a wildfire… it is a very worrying situation,” he said.

Previously on In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices

22 March: The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie


[Click on the icon to hear In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices, Martin Moodie]

21 March: China Duty Free Group President Charles Chen


[Click on the Podcast icon to hear Charles Chen’s interview with Martin Moodie]

20 March: Dubai Duty Free Executive Vice Chairman & CEO Colm McLoughlin

[Click on the icon to hear the full Colm McLoughlin interview]

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