Be­fore the Cur­tain Ris­es

By Karen Sharpes

Big events, such as sports events, con­fer­ences, ex­hi­bi­tions or fes­ti­vals – which usu­al­ly mean in­creased vol­umes of traf­fic in air­ports - are al­ways an op­por­tu­ni­ty for mak­ing ad­di­tion­al sales. That´s why these types of events are al­ways high­light­ed by our teams, who then pull out all the stops to make sure the store, the stock and our staff mem­bers are ready to wel­come the un­usu­al num­ber of cus­tomers when the date ar­rives.

The 26^th Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP26), which was host­ed in Glas­gow, Scot­land, be­tween 31^st Oc­to­ber and 12^th No­vem­ber – was one of those events. How­ev­er, this one was par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial – main­ly be­cause of the high lev­el of me­dia and pub­lic in­ter­est in the event, as well as the high pro­file at­ten­dees. As such, COP26 rep­re­sent­ed both a great show­case op­por­tu­ni­ty and a chal­lenge for our col­leagues run­ning the store op­er­a­tions.

Over 100 world lead­ers, along­side thou­sands of ne­go­tia­tors, gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens, trav­elled to Glas­gow for the twelve days of talks; and many used Heathrow air­port, Ed­in­burgh air­port and of course Glas­gow air­port to do so.  

With the height­ened fo­cus on cli­mate is­sues at this time and many del­e­gates pass­ing through our stores in these lo­ca­tions in par­tic­u­lar, we made sure every­one was ful­ly pre­pared for any cus­tomer ques­tions that might come our way.  

Store teams were there­fore briefed well in ad­vance and re­mind­ed of the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives Dufry al­ready has in place, as part of our ef­forts to make our busi­ness more sus­tain­able. These in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing:

Green Points of Sale

Our Mar­ket­ing team pro­duced point of sale sig­nage in the form of stick­ers, shelf ris­ers and strut cards which high­light­ed key sus­tain­able at­trib­ut­es of var­i­ous prod­ucts that we sell, in­clud­ing con­fec­tionery, beau­ty and se­lect­ed liquor items. There were icons for each of six key cat­e­gories and these were dis­played along­side rel­e­vant prod­ucts, to help our cus­tomers make in­formed choic­es about the prod­ucts they were buy­ing.

Carrier Bags and STEBs

An im­por­tant top­ic to brief our staff on was the com­pa­ny pol­i­cy when it comes to the re­duc­tion of plas­tic con­sump­tion, with a spe­cial fo­cus on plas­tic bags, as there could well be ques­tions from cus­tomers and del­e­gates on this sub­ject.

For some time now, we’ve been ask­ing cus­tomers if they need a car­ri­er bag rather than as­sum­ing they want one. Dufry has tak­en this a step fur­ther and since Oc­to­ber 2020, the com­pa­ny has start­ed the process of grad­u­al­ly re­plac­ing our plas­tic car­ri­er bags with more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ones made of com­postable and re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als.

Plas­tic Se­cu­ri­ty Tam­per Ev­i­dent Bags (STEBs) are an ex­cep­tion at the mo­ment as these are re­quired for cer­tain air­port pur­chas­es such as liquor or to­bac­co. How­ev­er, Dufry is ac­tive­ly ex­plor­ing re­cy­clable or degrad­able al­ter­na­tives which will still meet the spe­cif­ic avi­a­tion and air­port re­quire­ments for STEBs.

Leading by example

Our busi­ness is com­mit­ted, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble to Reduce – Reuse – Recycle. Our lo­cal store teams are there­fore re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that we Reduce the amount of pa­per we use for print­ing, Reuse what­ev­er we can and Recycle all rel­e­vant ma­te­ri­als and pack­ag­ing wher­ev­er we op­er­ate.

Raising awareness on the UN SDGs

Dufry´s link with the Unit­ed Na­tions start­ed many year ago. How­ev­er, the col­lab­o­ra­tion has been es­pe­cial­ly rel­e­vant since 2016, when both en­ti­ties col­lab­o­rat­ed on sev­er­al aware­ness cam­paigns linked to the UN´s Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals.

The COP26 event was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to yet again re­mind the world that we have spe­cif­ic ob­jec­tives to achieve – struc­tured un­der these 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) – and that these ob­jec­tives are not achiev­able with­out in­di­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions.

To this ex­tent, com­mu­ni­ca­tion around these 17 SDGs was promi­nent­ly dis­played in our Glas­gow store through pop up ban­ners and screens, high­light­ing Dufry’s sup­port of the UN Glob­al Ini­tia­tives and that as a busi­ness, we’re com­mit­ted to adopt­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices wher­ev­er we can.

Charitable Initiatives

COP26 was very much fo­cused on cli­mate is­sues and how these can be ad­dressed on a glob­al lev­el. Cli­mate is­sues are just one im­por­tant part of our glob­al En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) strat­e­gy and whilst an iso­lat­ed ac­tion might not mean much, as part of the broad­er ap­proach that is de­fined by our ESG strat­e­gy, it has a high­er val­ue. For this rea­son, it was im­por­tant to re­mind our staff of the sev­er­al char­i­ta­ble ini­tia­tives Dufry sup­ports as part of our cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty:

• Since 2016 World Duty Free has been one of the main commercial sponsors of The One Foundation, selling the charity’s bottled “One Water” and branded jute bags in all its UK stores. To date, funds generated via sales of these items have helped to fund installation of and improvements to water and sanitation systems in many low income regions across Africa.   
  
  
• Our very own Captain Dufry was prominently on display in both Glasgow and Edinburgh stores and 100% of the profit raised from the sale of these cute soft toys goes towards educational charities, including SOS Children’s Villages.