Perfume helps Dubai Duty Free hit record sales in 2023

Dubai Airports

• $2.15bn in transactions
• 6% above 2019 results
• India is biggest source market

Dubai Duty Free (DDF) recorded record sales of AED7.885 billion ($2.15 billion) in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 24 percent, and 6 percent above 2019, with perfume retaining its title as the top-selling sector.

DDF celebrated its 40th anniversary in December, and the holiday month finished the year with sales of AED807.6 million, an 8 percent increase compared to 2022. 

In 2023 DDF recorded around 20 million sale transactions, averaging some 55,000 a day, or 40 a minute.

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The top five best-selling categories for the year were perfumes followed by liquor, gold, cigarettes and tobacco, and electronics. 

Purchases of perfume reached AED1.366 billion and accounted for 17 percent of total sales.

This was followed by liquor (AED1.130 billion and 14 percent of sales), gold (AED773,506 million and 10 percent of sales), cigarettes and tobacco (AED745,694 million and 9 percent of sales) and electronics (AED628 million and 8 percent of sales).

Nine out of 10 sales were generated in the departures section, while 8 percent came from arrivals and 2 percent were online.

India was the biggest source market, with AED973 million of sales, followed by Russia (AED759 million), China (AED564 million), Saudi Arabia (AED512 million) and the UK (AED373 million).