Snapshot of DDF’s gleaming retail offering in Concourse C.

Dubai International reigned supreme in 2025, with retail performing strongly. This year the story is very different as the hub navigates the impact of external events.

For the 12th year in a row in 2025, Dubai International (DXB) was crowned the world’s busiest international hub by global airports association ACI World. With record traffic of 95.2m, DXB pulled away from number-two ranked, London Heathrow, creating a gap of more than 15m passengers.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) airport’s core retailer, Dubai Duty Free (DDF), also had its best ever year. Sales surged by +9.9% year-on-year (YOY) to AED8.68 billion (US$2.38 billion) with the retailer’s Managing Director, Ramesh Cidambi, describing 2025 as “a truly historic year”, helped by an effective strategy to increase penetration, improve conversion, and drive transaction values.

The MD added: “Our 2025 performance is due to the resilience and dedication of the team under difficult conditions combined with great support from our suppliers and brand partners. They have increased customer engagement and spend… while breaking records in 10 out of 12 months during the year.”

That resilience – which saw DDF’s growth in sales exceeded passenger traffic by about 5% – will certainly be needed this year. The 28 February US-Israel attack on Iran and subsequent conflict has heavily impacted the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Airspace and route disruptions led to a March traffic collapse of -65.7% YOY to just 2.5m passengers. In March 2025, traffic hit 7.3m which means that in a single month DXB lost 4.8m passengers, a stark illustration of the conflict’s impact – with the repercussions ongoing.

Q1 traffic down -20.6%

An X post on 4 May from the Dubai Media Office, the government’s mouthpiece, noted that first quarter traffic at DXB fell to 18.6m, down -20.6% YOY. Much of that loss is from the high-spending transfer segment.

Emirates introduced a Comprehensive Travel Cover travel insurance product in June, offering medical cover for conflict-related incidents, backed by airline-managed hotel accommodation and extended-stay support across a range of disruption scenarios.

A mid-May impact study from ACI Asia-Pacific & Middle East (ACI APAC & MID), based on the nine top airports in Middle East, estimated that in 2025, approximately 197 million passengers travelled between Asia-Pacific and western destinations (Europe, Americas and Africa) equivalent to 540,000 passengers daily. About 18% of them – roughly 97,000 passengers per day – connected through hubs in the Middle East, with Emirates at DXB, and Qatar Airways at Hamad International (DOH), taking the lion’s share.

ACI APAC & MID stated: “The restriction of Gulf airspace effectively removed nearly one-fifth of all east-west connecting capacity from the global aviation network within hours of the conflict’s onset, an event of systemic significance for international air transport.”

Dubai Airports, the state-owned operator of DXB, maintains that as conditions stabilise, the transfer segment “is expected to recover quickly” because it “cannot be readily absorbed elsewhere”.

Ramesh Cidambi, Managing Director, Dubai Duty Free and Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.

Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, said in a statement: “International transfer traffic through the Middle East region accounts for a major share of the global air travel market, with 22.4 million annual passenger journeys flowing through DXB, representing one third of the transfer traffic across the region’s hubs. Maintaining the smooth operation of DXB is therefore critical to keep global journeys moving.

DDF redesigned its Arrivals shops across Terminals 1, 2, and 3 at DXB just over a year ago.

“Our collective response to these challenges has sharpened our ability to adapt at pace. That readiness will enable us to accommodate returning demand as capacity is restored, reinforcing DXB’s role as a leading global hub, even as some regional routing constraints remain.”

Those constraints might not be short-lived. While Emirates has put back 96% of its global network, the CEO of the world’s most profitable airline, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, admits that “we are still operating at a lower passenger capacity than pre-disruption”, but added, “Dubai’s place at the nexus of global commerce, trade and travel flows is unchanged”.

Communications lockdown

The conflict led to an immediate shut-down of sales-related press releases from DDF, with no publication of its first quarter 2026 performance as yet. From a Q1 customer perspective, India was DXB’s largest country market again, with 2.5 million travellers, followed by Saudi Arabia at 1.3 million, the UK at 1.2 million, and Pakistan at 918,000. London remained DXB’s busiest city destination with 752,000 guests, followed by Mumbai at 520,000, and Jeddah at 505,000.

Dubai Airports has also been guarded in its external communications and could not take part in this report for that reason. Looking ahead, the DXB operator was not able to provide any firm traffic forecast for the year given the still unstable conflict scenario. Dubai Airports says only that the outlook for the year “remains underpinned by strong underlying demand”.

HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman & Chief Executive, Emirates Airline & Group.

However, the headwinds of elevated airfares (July-August flights to and from Middle East are priced at an average of +50% above pre-conflict levels), and travellers having already booked alternative destinations for summer vacations, will be formidable hurdles. As airspace capacity improves, DXB is actively increasing flight movements and working with airline and airspace partners to unlock additional network capacity.    

For both DDF and Dubai Airports, the priority will be to bring passengers back to the airport and to the shops – particularly the more cautious leisure travellers on whom a significant part of Dubai’s economy is built. The emirate welcomed 19.6 million visitors in 2025.

This will require a big drive across multiple disciplines including aviation, tourism and hospitality. Based on past performance, Dubai has excelled at this, in part thanks to what Emirates Group’s CEO describes as “a cohesive aviation ecosystem”. So expect a big push for the rest of the year if conditions stabilise sufficiently.

This feature first appeared in the Top 10 Airport report in the July issue of TRBusiness. Click here to read.

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