UAE. Today, 1 June, marks Dubai Duty Free Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Colm McLoughlin’s 53rd anniversary in the travel retail business.
It is a remarkable story, told in two parts, one in his native Ireland and one, of course, in Dubai.
Colm McLoughlin’s duty free journey began at Shannon Duty Free at Shannon Airport on the west coast of Ireland after he read about a job there while on holiday in his native Ireland in the spring of 1969.
“I had been working for Woolworths in London so I had a number of years of retail management experience,” he recalled. “When I saw the job advertised in Shannon Duty Free I thought ‘I wonder what that is about’, so I applied for the position mainly to see what the job entailed.”
[The Moodie Davitt Report produced this special video in 2019 to mark Colm McLoughin’s 53rd year in the travel retail industry]
He was offered the job on the spot at the place where the duty free industry was started by Dr. Brendan O’Regan in 1947. It turned out to be a fitting springboard as McLoughlin would one day assume the mantle of the travel retail industry statesman from a man who had long inspired him.
“Dr. Brendan O’Regan was a great man and was the founding father of the duty free industry that we know today,” said McLoughlin. “He was not in Shannon in my time, but he was talked about with great respect at all times.”
In July 1983, the second chapter began as McLoughlin moved, supposedly temporarily, to Dubai as part of a ten-man team from Aer Rianta. At the request of the Dubai Government, a duty free operation would be established as part of a six-month consultancy agreement.
“We had only six months to turn the project round,” McLoughlin recalled. “During that time we had to recruit and train 100 staff; we had to purchase products; we had to establish systems and so on; so we had no time off and worked around the clock. It was worth it though when we opened for business on 20 December and took US$44,000 in that first day and went on to have sales of US$20 million in the first full year.”
Within months of the opening of Dubai Duty Free, McLoughlin was asked to remain as General Manager of the new operation. Two other members of the original Aer Rianta team also stayed in Dubai, including John Sutcliffe, who later headed up Aer Rianta International based in Bahrain, and George Horan, who became President of Dubai Duty Free in 2011 and retired in 2016.
In October 1985, the retail operation was named ‘Airport Duty Free Operator of the Year’ at the inaugural Frontier Awards in France, an award it has subsequently won a record number of times. McLoughlin was also honoured with a ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award in 2004, making him only the second person, after Dr. Brendan O’Regan, to receive the award at that time.
Dubai Duty Free has won well in excess of 700 awards over the years, and McLoughlin has received some 80 personal awards from the industry and media alike. In 2017, he was conferred by the Middlesex University Dubai with an Honorary Doctorate of the University.
By pre-pandemic 2019, sales had climbed to US$2.029 billion. Since that point McLoughlin has steered Dubai Duty Free through the most difficult period in industry history. Sales rose +40% year-on-year in 2021 to (US$976 million) and are continuing to climb quickly this year as passenger traffic recovers.
McLoughlin told The Moodie Davitt Report in May that sales are currently running at +104% up on 2021 levels, even without the key Chinese passenger contribution of the past. Next year will mark his 40th year at Dubai Duty Free, an extraordinary landmark.
