Airports Authority of India to revamp 13 airports' duty-free operations

Soon passengers travelling from even relatively smaller airports — Mangalore, Pune and Jaipur among others — can enjoy heavy discounts at duty-free shops, as Airports Authority of India (AAI) is revamping the 'duty-free' operations at 13 international airports run by it.

At present, several of these duty-free shops do not find many takers due to lack of attractive goods and offers. But soon they will match those of privately-run metro airports (Mumbai and Delhi among others), as a global tender for the 13 airports has been issued. The tender has been invited for work on "Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Maintain" basis.

The airports for which tender has been invited are Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Kozhikode, Chennai, Coimbatore, Goa, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Pune, Trichy and Thiruvananthapuram.
"The duty-free shops at these airports will now be grand and exhaustive, similar to those at prominent international airports. We are going to allot more space for the shops," said GS Bawa, a spokesperson for AAI, which runs most of the civil aviation airports in India.

Duty-free stores are exempt from having to pay certain local/national duties and levies on the condition that goods are sold to travellers on production of certain documents, like passport or ticket. These stores are mainly located in the international zones of airports and sea ports.
As per a study conducted by a consulting firm, Centre for Aviation (CAPA), in May 2012, liquor leads the duty-free category in India, accounting for 63% of sales, compared with 17% globally. CAPA expects the duty-free business to grow about $3.5 billion by 2021.

"AAI achieving their unconstrained potential is subject to a number of factors such as the ability to introduce a stronger commercial focus at the management level of airports, construction of sufficient capacity to meet demand and the allocation of bilaterals for services to non-metro airports," the report said.
"If the AAI is able to leverage this potential it stands to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of the travel retail phenomenon."