Senior representatives from World Duty Free and London Southend Airport joined together to celebrate the formal opening of World Duty Free’s 302sq m store this week – nearly one year since Dufry won the concession to operate the contract.

 

World Duty Free (WDF) began operating at Southend last November and says it has been working in close partnership with airport owner the Stobart Group ‘to take the retail offer at the airport to the next level’.

 

WDF also took on five of the existing Stobart staff when it took over the contract and now has a total staffing level of fourteen.

 

PASSENGERS EXPECTED TO TOP 1M

Southend currently claims to be one of the fastest-growing regional airports in the UK, with passenger numbers expected to top one million this year, with leading destinations currently including Spain and the Canary Isles (Alicante, Barcelona, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Malaga, Palma etc) the Netherlands, France and Portugal and other short flights to continental Europe.

 

Other new routes in 2018 include the following: Budapest, Caen, Dublin, Dubrovnik, Glasgow, Groningen, Lyon, Manchester, Milan, Prague, Rennes and Vienna.

 

The retailer says it has selected a wide range of brands and products with some of the best sellers including Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, Bombay Sapphire Gin, Ray-Ban and Swarovski.

 

Commenting on the store operation, Fred Creighton, Managing Director at Dufry for the UK and Germany said: “Since it started trading towards the end of last year, our Southend store has exceeded all expectations and sales are well ahead of what was forecast.

 

SOUTHEND HAS A CONTRACT WITH EASYJET TO 2021

“This is due in no small part to the great store team led by manager John Miles and, of course, to the outstanding support we’ve had from the Stobart Group, with whom we quickly developed an excellent working relationship. We expect the store to continue going from strength to strength”.

 

Glyn Jones, CEO, Stobart Aviation, the owners of London Southend Airport since 2008 said: “World Duty Free are a world-class operation and we feel that since the store launch they have provided a fantastic product offering and exceptional customer service. We look forward to a successful future together.”

 

Southend Airport was voted ‘the best London Airport’ by the UK consumer magazine ‘Which’ in 2013.

 

It also opened a new state-of-the-art air traffic control tower and mainline railway station in 2011 – the same year that the UK’s second-largest carrier easyJet signed an important ten-year agreement to use the facility as a new hub for scheduled flights to several European destinations