December 19, 1983. Colm McLoughlin stands on an oil barrel in a room underneath Dubai airport showing his new staff what a dollar bill and pound sterling looked like.
The following day, a retail operation launched that would change the face of duty free across the globe.
“We were so excited when we got out first day sales. And it was massive, ” recalls McLoughlin, of the Dh141, 000 generated.
More than three decades on, the Irish expatriate has overseen its transformation into an operation that made a staggering Dh7bn last year. He is now executive vice chairman and chief executive.
Decades before, McLoughlin had shelved plans to become a dentist and wound up at Shannon Airport in Ireland. It was here in 1947 that the world’s first duty free shop opened. Delegations from across the globe visited Shannon and a contract was signed with Dubai to establish a duty free.
He arrived in July that year as part of a ten - person team following a request from the director general of Dubai Civil Aviation, Mohi - Din Binhendi. The task: establish a duty free in just six months. Then the city had a population of just 300, 000, with a small airport carrying three million passengers a year. Dubai was unrecognisable to the one we know today. Now in his 70s, he recalls those early days, the relentless growth of Dubai Duty Free and the country he left behind.
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