In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices: Sinead el Sibai, Dubai Duty Free : Moodie Davitt Report

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

Today’s episode features Sinead el Sibai, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Dubai Duty Free. Sinead manages not only the retailer’s extensive marketing activities around its retailing interests but those relating to Dubai Duty Free’s many sporting, cultural, charitable and other events and endeavours at home and abroad, including in her native Ireland.

Sinead’s an impressive, unflappable manager, with the ability to somehow keep more balls juggling in the air than a circus performer. She is one of several fine executives in the retailer’s senior management group, what Dubai Duty Free Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Colm McLoughlin calls his ‘Dream Team’.

Sinead and her husband Jihad, pictured at a social event after the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby in Ireland

Sinead (pictured third from right at the back) recently received the ‘Women Leader in Sports Excellence Award’ at the 21st Middle East Women Leaders Excellence Awards held in Dubai, recognising her professionalism, dynamism and overall contribution.

Now, like all the Dubai Duty Free team, she’s facing a different kind of professional challenge. Martin Moodie caught up with Sinead in Dubai by phone to see how she was doing.