UAE. After a tough, COVID-ravaged year in which annual sales fell -65% to US$697 million in 2020 from a record high of USS$2.029 billion a year earlier, Dubai Duty Free has been boosted by two recent political developments which will each drive significant new revenues.
Spending last year was devastated by an -80% fall in passenger traffic at Dubai International (DXB) to just 17 million (from 86.4 million). But 2021 has started on a brighter note with the impressively rapid roll-out of vaccines in the UAE and the addition of key route networks, one new and one returning after a long absence.
The first came with the normalisation of relations between the UAE and Israel last September. As a result, the two countries struck an aviation agreement soon after, which saw Israeli carrier El Al begin operating 14 flights a week between Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv and Dubai International (DXB) from 13 December. Dubai-based Emirates will launch daily nonstop flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv from 15 February.
The second development saw the UAE, along with regional neighbours Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain restore full ties with Qatar earlier this month, ending a bitter three and a half year dispute.
Both breakthroughs deliver Dubai Duty Free important new travelling shoppers – in the Israeli case, for the first time in history.
Dubai Duty Free Executive Vice Chairman & CEO Colm McLoughlin told The Moodie Davitt Report: “It’s very positive. We’re listing kosher products where needed for our Israeli passengers and in November/December we recorded sales of AED12 million(US$3.27 million on those flights).
“The Qatar flights are beginning again, and they were an important part of our business in the past, so that is very positive. Before the dispute, flights out of Concourse D – which is currently closed – represented some of our biggest numbers.”
Commercial prospects have also been boosted by the quickfire roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines (both the Sinopharm and Pfizer-BioNTech variants) in Dubai. The UAE has administered almost 1.8 million vaccine doses and has the second-highest rate of innoculations after Israel. McLoughlin, who will receive his second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine tomorrow, praised the efforts of the UAE authorities in organising such a rapid, countrywide deployment.
