UAE. Welcome to In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices: a new Podcast series where we speak to members of the travel retail community all around the world to examine how they, their businesses and even their families are coping with the COVID-19 crisis.
In a remarkable 50 year career in travel retail, both in his native Ireland and since 1983 in Dubai, Colm McLoughlin has seen various global and regional crises, some – like the two Gulf Wars and the SARS outbreak of 2003 – very serious indeed. But even the supremo of the world’s biggest single retailer airport duty free business, Dubai Duty Free, admits he has not seen anything like this before.
[Click on the icon to hear the full Colm McLoughlin interview]
Executive Vice Chairman & CEO McLoughlin said that Dubai Duty Free’s business had been up AED22 million (US$5.9 million) year-on-year for January, but is now down by AED200 million (US$53.6 million) for the year to date.
For the first 19 days of March, sales slumped -43% year-on-year and judging by impending developments in Dubai, things are about to get much worse.
Giving the view from Dubai, McLoughlin says: “Our only traffic through Dubai Airport right now is transit traffic. In conjunction with many things, we have closed our Irish Village at the Parks & Resorts. Today we are closing our arrivals.
“There is a discussion going on at the airport about the possibility of closing Concourse A, which would mean our duty free would cease to operate. There has been a tremendous effect, but all these decisions are, in my opinion, correct to help us get over this period of time.”
Speaking about some of the logistical challenges, McLoughlin said: “We have 1,500 of our staff on holiday at present; 500 of them are overseas and one of the latest government rules is that there is no entry allowed into Dubai, except returning UAE nationals, at the present time.”
Commenting on how the impact of COVID-19 compares to past crises, he added: “I keep on reading that this is worse than anything before and, on our business, it does seem to have had a bigger effect on us than anything before. The [easing Chinese outbreak] figures coming in suggest that it won’t be long term, but nobody can say for sure at the moment.”
He added: “We are trying our best, looking forward to things coming right and then we are all looking forward to a time when the whole team can bounce back to where we were before.”
