Lagardère Travel Retail (LTR) has won a 10-year contract to operate a 1,000sq m duty free store and a 100sq m Relay press, books, snacks and souvenir shop at Sénégal, Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) – which opens on 7 December of this year.

 

The new 10m passenger-capacity airport – located 50km from the Dakar capital – has taken more than a decade to build and cost more than $575m.

 

GOVT LOOKING FOR 3M PAX IN YEAR ONE

The government says it will handle 3m passengers in its first year and also create up to 10,000 new jobs in the long term, as airport-related businesses progressively and gradually establish themselves around the new facility. In 2016, the existing airport – Leopold Sedar Senghor – handled nearly 2m passengers.

 

The new facility will be managed by the Operating Company, a consortium comprising Summa, Limak and the Senegalese government-owned AIBD S.A. Its board members – Hakan Oztürk, from Limak and Haydar Ergun from Summa – said they welcomed the arrival of the new retailer.

 

A WIDE AND VARIED OFFER…

“With a worldwide company, highly experienced in duty free and with ambitious objectives, we want to offer our passengers a wide and varied offer. We are very happy to welcome Lagardère in Dakar.”

 

Lagardère Travel Retail Chairman and CEO Dag Rasmussen was equally happy: “We are very proud to have been awarded this new concession in Senegal, which is the thirty-third country in which we will be present in travel retail.

 

LAGARDÈRE MAKES ITS AFRICAN DEBUT

“We are taking 2017 a step further by entering a new region that offers many opportunities for our group.

 

“Lagardère Travel Retail and the Operating Company will work in close collaboration to be ready for an opening before the 7th of December 2017. We will do our utmost to live up to the expectations and to provide a service and experience of the highest quality.”