Indian airport retail tenders herald the next wave of travel retail growth

With both Mumbai and Chennai airports releasing tenders in Aug-2012 for duty free and retail concessions at their new terminals, the Indian travel retail scene is set for yet another boost, following on from the impact of the opening of Delhi which has raced ahead to become the largest duty free market in the country.

Although non-aeronautical revenue at major Indian airports is growing and considerable progress in this arena has been made in recent years, it still lags in the global context. The global duty free market was around USD23 billion in 2010, while duty free sales in India amounted to only around USD215 million in FY2011 (with growth of around 25-30% forecast for FY2012), which is less than 1% of the total revenue, while Indian airports handle around 3% of global airport passenger traffic. Compare this to Dubai, which reported sales of USD1.46 billion from duty free in 2011. All Chinese airports registered combined revenue of USD1.9 billion.