 |
ATÜ Duty Free’s new-look Arrivals stores at Istanbul Atatürk are helping to drive penetration and spend |
TURKEY. Turkey’s leading duty free retailer, ATÜ Duty Free, is pushing ahead with expansion at its key airport locations, and is aiming to hit 2008 sales levels in 2010, after a difficult 2009. ATÜ Duty Free is a joint venture between TAV Airports Holding and Unifree, in which Gebr Heinemann is a major shareholder and the principal supplier.
General Manager Ersan Arcan told The Moodie Report: “We feel we are experiencing a better year than in 2009. The recovery is there but we also know that we are going through delicate times so we’re careful. The benchmark will be [to end the year] around 2008 figures, and we reached that target in the first half.”
He said that the retailer’s sales growth has kept pace with surging passenger numbers at Turkey’s airports. In the first seven months to July, traffic at TAV Airports locations soared by +13% to 26.3 million passengers, with international volumes rising by +14% to 15.9 million.
Amid the rebound, ATÜ has opened two new outlets at the vital Turkish gateway of Istanbul Atatürk International Airport. It recently opened two new stores, of 50sq m and 38sq m, at two of the key gates serving departing passengers.
And the company has been expanding outside Istanbul too. It has opened a new store dedicated to local products at Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport, and increased the size of its diplomatic duty free shop at Ankara Esenboga Airport.
Outside Turkey, earlier in the year the retailer opened two new duty free and two landside stores at the Macedonian airports of Skopje and Ohrid respectively, as TAV Airports took over management of the locations. Business at Enfidha International Airport in Tunisia, which opened in late 2009, is described as “satisfactory”, and “growing as forecast”.
 |
 |
ATÜ Duty Free says its operations at Enfidha Airport in Tunisia are “growing as forecast” |
Note: A full report on ATÜ Duty Free’s latest activities will appear in The Moodie Report Print Edition for September, along with market reports on China, Russia and India.
