Looking for a Good Buy? Try the Airport in Dubai

This is a good place to buy a mink coat, even though the temperature outside may be 135 degrees. It’s where Poles buy video players, Indians gold bullion and Iranians the latest in American camouflage clothing.

Those are the conclusions of an Irishman named Colm McLoughlin, soeaking of the duty-free shop at Dubai’s International Airport. Dubai is one of the small states that make up the United Arab Emirates fronting the Persian Gulf.

McLoughlin is talking Scotch whisky at $2.90 a bottle, perfume at 30% below what the the duty-free shops of Amsterdam and London charge, and cameras, electronic gear and luggage at unusually low prices.

McLoughlin, the general manager of Dubai’s duty-free shop, admits that he is working with a distinct advantage.

“We are designed as a supplemental service at the airport,” he says.

Sales Take Off

As a result, sales have taken off in the past three years, from an estimated $20 million in 1984 to a projected $47 million in 1987.

The duty-free shop at Dubai is distinctive as much for what it sells as for its low prices. Along with the camera and electronics counters of the sort found in most duty-free shops, Dubai has a gold bazaar similar to what might have been set up here 2,000 years ago. Gold bullion is sold at market prices, jewelry by the gram and troy ounce.

“It’s a very Middle Eastern kind of thing,” McLoughlin said in the course of a tour through the shop, which occupies an entire floor of the terminal building. “We have to cater to a lot of tastes.”

Persian carpets are sold at one stall, tennis rackets at another. You can get clothing and cloth by the yard (a favorite with Palestinians), Rolex watches, Swiss chocolates and Iranian caviar. Mink and other furs are available at 50% of the retail value in Europe, McLoughlin said.

He spews out sales statistics like a computer: Last year he sold 794,000 bottles of liquor, 15,000 briefcases, 25 tons of Swiss chocolate.

And he takes pride that liquor sales, the stock-in-trade of duty-free shops elsewhere, account for only 12% of his sales.

McLoughlin says that LOT, the Polish national airline, makes a weekly stop at Dubai en route to Warsaw from New Delhi and that the passengers often buy as many as 100 video players.

Anita Mehra, marketing officer for the duty-free shop, says a big seller among Iranian travelers is an army fatigue jacket made in the United States. The shop tried substituting a cheaper model, made in South Korea, but the Iranians balked, she says, and demanded the genuine article.

In part because of services such as those provided by the duty-free shop, airport traffic has grown to 3.8 million passengers passing through last year, 1 million of them disembarking, 1 million embarking and 1.8 million in transit.

Dubai is one of the few countries that allows a duty-free shop for arriving passengers as well as for those leaving.

Ironically, many passengers are not aware that Dubai levies a duty of only 4% on imported goods. As a result, many items can be bought on the street at prices even lower than those at the duty-free shop.