Dubai Duty Free breaks record for daily sales

Dubai Duty Free said its 28th anniversary on December 20 broke all records for the operation with the day's sales reaching Dh86.75 million. A 25 per cent discount offer to mark the operation's 28th anniversary resulted in a massive spending spree at Dubai International Airport that began at midnight on December 19 and continued until midnight December 20. On that day the cash registers recorded over 131,000 transactions. Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice Chairman of Dubai Duty Free said: "Achieving sales of this magnitude in a 24-hour period is obviously fantastic for Dubai Duty Free and for our customers, who made the most of the annual discount day. The daily sales are a new daily record and are substantially higher than our first full year of business (1984), when our annual sales reached $20 million. The 28th anniversary sales figure of Dh86.75 million is 30 per cent higher than that on last year's anniversary. By category, perfumes were the biggest seller with sales of Dh32.47 million, or 37 per cent of the day's sales. Article continues below Watches ranked second in popularity with sales of Dh17.79 million. Cosmetics were third with sales of Dh7.1 million. Electronics jumped to the fifth place with the demand for the latest technology driving electronic sales to Dh3.64 million. Other notable sales were in gold at Dh2.18 million, ladies handbags at Dh1.15 million, and men's fashion in which sales topped Dh936,944. "We began introducing a discount offer across a wide range of merchandise on our 20th anniversary in 2003 and it has become a popular day with travellers, some of whom book their flights in order to shop on that day," McLoughlin said. Dubai Duty Free employs close to 4,000 staff and of the original 100 staff who joined in December 1983, 48 remain in active service.