Dubai Duty Free sales soar to record $2.16bn in 2023 as travel continues to grow

Dubai Duty Free said sales grew by about a quarter to hit a record high of nearly Dh7.9 billion ($2.16 billion) in 2023, reaching its target for the year, underpinned by continued growth in passenger traffic and booming activity in December.

Sales increased 24.4 per cent annually in 2023 and were up 6.4 per cent from 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic stalled travel worldwide, Dubai Duty Free said on Thursday.

The retailer said sales in December – when it marked its 40th anniversary – rose about 8.4 per cent year-on-year to a monthly record of Dh807.6 million, aided by a special sale on December 20 that generated Dh54.1 million in just 24 hours.

“We are thrilled to have achieved our target sales for the year, a record month in December and a record year in 2023 … overall, it has been a fantastic year,” Colm McLoughlin, executive vice chairman and chief executive of Dubai Duty Free, said.

Dubai Duty Free reported more than 20 million sales transactions throughout 2023, which is an average of almost 55,000 transactions daily, with about 55.2 million units of merchandise sold.

The increase in sales was the result of higher passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest hub by international traffic, as aviation continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic that hammered global demand for air travel.

The airport recorded 22.9 million passengers in the third quarter of 2023 – the highest quarterly traffic since 2019 – Dubai Airports said in November.

That took the total traffic for the first nine months of the year to 64.5 million passengers, up 39.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2022.

Dubai Airports, which manages Dubai International Airport and Al Maktoum International Airport, is expecting “record-breaking” numbers in the fourth quarter and 2024, it said.

Dubai International Airport’s annual passenger traffic is predicted to reach 93.8 million in 2025, surpassing its busiest year in 2018 when it recorded 89.1 million travellers, and “hopefully we’ll get the magic 100 million number not long after”, Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Dubai Airports, told media at the Dubai Airshow in November.

The figure is expected as its home airlines, Emirates and flydubai, start to take delivery of wide-body aircraft and as more foreign airlines launch flights to the hub.

This year it anticipates handling 88.2 million passengers.