Spanish airports group AENA reports that growth in its revenues from World Duty Free’s shops at all of its international airports registered +34.7% to €192.8m ($203.7m) in the first nine months of this year, thanks to its new long-term contract with the Dufry-owned company.

In its accounts reporting, AENA said: “The effect on commercial revenue of the new long-term contracts (notably the World Duty Free Group contract), the expansion and remodelling of areas intended for commercial activity, and the design of a new business model for integrated car park management have driven the growth in commercial revenue from the exploitation of services both on-and off-terminals to €89.8m/$95.3m (+15.0%).”

AENA added that ‘most commercial business lines grew significantly compared with the previous year’, with the most important changes observed in the duty free shops business, generating a rise of +34.7% to €192.8m ($203.7m) thanks to ‘improved economic conditions in the new contract.

 

Meanwhile, other shops’ revenue increased by +19.7% and +€10.1m). AENA said: “In 2014, the opening of new points of sale at several of the network airports enhanced the commercial offer, including in the luxury segment.

The breakdown of this increase by airport was as follows: Madrid Barajas (€6.7m), Barcelona (€4.4m) and Málaga (€1.7m), mainly due to the effect of the luxury segment, although for Málaga it is also worth noting the significant increase in sales due to an expansion of its commercial offering.”

By contrast, AENA added that revenues from F&B services grew by +14.6% to €100.1m ($105.7m) during the period, while car park revenue rose +8.0%.

 

 

AENA’s total income for the nine-month period January to September rose +12.3% to €2,689.7m ($2,855.7m), with income from the commercial area (on and off terminal) accounting for 25.9% of the total for the period in 2015. (This data reflects the consolidation of Luton Airport into the business).

During the same period, a total of 161.2m passengers passed through AENA’s 46 Spanish airports, corresponding to a 5.2% increase compared with the same period last year [this was close to AENA’s all-time record 162.4m passengers recorded over nine months in 2007-Ed].

International traffic maintained the positive trend recorded in 2013 (+2.1%) and 2014 (+5.7%), representing a +5.0% increase over the first nine months of 2015. AENA says this was due to many visitors switching destinations to visit Spain.

 

Amongst its top passenger airports, AENA noted happily that Madrid-Barajas Airport – its busiest in the network – has seen traffic remain positive now since February 2014, after a dark 25-month period of traffic declines.

 

During this latest first nine months of 2015, passengers rose by +12.0% to 35.2m compared with the same period of the previous year (+14.3% for international traffic and +6.4% for domestic traffic).

Barcelona-El Prat Airport also registered a passenger increase of +4.7% (+5.6% for international and +2.4% for domestic traffic), to stand at 30.7m, while Palma de Mallorca generated 19.9m (+2.1%) with international exceeding 15.6m passengers (+0.1%) and domestic 4.3m (+10.1%).

The number of passengers using airports in the Canary Islands rose to 26.3m (+1.9% compared with the first nine months of 2014), of which nine million were domestic (+4.9%) and 17m international (+0.6%).

All of the eight airports of Group 1 also grew by +4.4% during the first nine months, reaching 40m passengers. AENA says the most notable increases were recorded in Seville (+10.3%), Valencia (+9.7%) and Menorca (+8.6%).

Meanwhile, Luton Airport in the UK saw passenger traffic reach 9.4m over the nine months, up +15.7% compared with the same period in 2014.

Most recently, AENA has also reported its top line November passenger results showing that its 46 airports saw overall traffic rise by 8% to 13m compared with the same month last year.