Dubai Duty Free says sales beat Apple’s best store

Dubai Duty Free’s (DDF) retail sales per square metre (sqm) are the best in the world, its chief executive has said.

Speaking to local radio station Dubai Eye on Monday, DDF executive vice-chairman and CEO Colm McLoughlin revealed that its retail sales per sqm surpass Apple’s best performing store in New York on Fifth Avenue.

The CEO said that DDF did a study to see how its results compared to top retailers.

“The highest we found was an Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York, which last year had a return of $66,000 per sqm per annum… so we are better than that,” he added.

Similarly, the CEO highlighted that retail sales at DDF are more than twice the sales of other duty free outlets in the world.

McLoughlin noted that retail sales per square metre at DDF reached $70,000 per annum, double the world average of retail sales per sqm per year of $34,000.

DDF sales are expected to peak at $3bn by 2020 and its retail space will more than double to reach 80,000 sqm by 2022, he added.

The CEO also described the introduction of value added tax at the start of 2018 as a “good move.”

However, he said: “If we find our value has eroded and if we find that operations can adjust, we will adjust our prices if we have the room to do it.”

DDF topped the retail sale charts per sqm even after facing a sales slump in recent years.

The company announced a 3.18 per cent fall in sales in 2016 from around $1.87bn to $1.82bn, despite growing passenger numbers at Dubai International.

At the time, McLoughlin attributed the decline to foreign currency fluctuations.

Read: Currency movements hit 2016 sales at Dubai Duty Free