Wall of Fame

In each issue, the Wall of Fame section introduces Dufry employees who have done something exceptional, who pursue a fascinating hobby, or who have experienced something remarkable.

João Victor
Zurich air­port (Switzer­land)

Es­tée Laud­er Com­pa­nies (ELC) have an eye for spot­ting tal­ent. They found a great as­set in our Zurich air­port col­league, João Vic­tor. In the con­text of the 2019 Win­ter Tom Ford trav­el re­tail fo­rum, or­ga­nized in Lon­don, Joao was nom­i­nat­ed from all Tom Ford spe­cial­ists world­wide across the Re­tail EMA re­gion, to rep­re­sent Tom Ford Beau­ty as an in­flu­encer on so­cial me­dia. The Tom Ford in­flu­encer pro­gram kicked off some months ago with a num­ber of se­lect­ed spe­cial­ists world­wide. Af­ter ob­serv­ing and watch­ing, the list was edit­ed down to the five best ones… with our very own Joao on this fi­nal list! His sell­ing skills and com­mit­ment fi­nal­ly made him the one and we are very proud to see one of our staff mem­bers be­come a suc­cess sto­ry with one of our most val­ued brand part­ners. Con­grat­u­la­tions João and keep it up!

Wendy Bulpett, Sharaine Margerum & Sue Whitworth,  
Southamp­ton air­port (UK)

Go­ing the ex­tra mile. What does this re­al­ly mean? Ba­si­cal­ly, it is about mak­ing that lit­tle ad­di­tion­al ef­fort that mas­sive­ly changes the ex­pe­ri­ence of our cus­tomers when in our stores. The fol­low­ing sto­ry might be one of the clear­est ex­am­ples you can ever find. One of our cus­tomers was trav­el­ling out of Southamp­ton last April to vis­it his fa­ther in France, who had re­cent­ly moved there. How­ev­er, he for­got some­thing triv­ial, but very im­por­tant for him: buy­ing some PG Tips tea bags and a copy of The Times news­pa­per for his fa­ther. Our dis­tressed pas­sen­ger asked our staff if he would have suf­fi­cient time to get back to land­side to go and find a shop and then get back to take his flight. In the note this pas­sen­ger sent us lat­er on, he de­scribed what hap­pened next. One of the three fe­male mem­bers of our staff that were with this pas­sen­ger arranged with her daugh­ter to col­lect the goods and bring them to the air­port. The ex­pres­sion on the pas­sen­ger’s face when he was told the goods were on the way said it all! Of­fer­ing help – and ac­tu­al­ly get­ting the goods air­side – made this pas­sen­ger feel cared for and ex­treme­ly wel­come in our store and in the air­port. These three ladies showed a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude to get the job done and en­sured an un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ence in one of our stores. Well done!  

World Duty Free UK staff

Would you like to help One Foun­da­tion by buy­ing a bot­tle of wa­ter or a jute bag? That’s prob­a­bly one of the most re­peat­ed sen­tences we can hear at any till in our stores in the UK. How­ev­er, the po­ten­tial linked to that sim­ple of­fer is a bit un­der­rat­ed, when you con­sid­er the mas­sive im­pact gen­er­at­ed by each bot­tle or bag sold. A part­ner­ship that start­ed back in 2006 has en­abled us to raise over 2 mil­lion pounds so far, which has been used to help bring clean, safe wa­ter to over 400,000 peo­ple in Africa. From April 28 to May 1, eight of our UK col­leagues had the chance to join The One Foun­da­tion's an­nu­al wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion vis­its to Nairo­bi, in Kenya and see first-hand the con­tri­bu­tion our busi­ness makes to the de­vel­op­ment of much need­ed in­fra­struc­ture in sev­en in­for­mal set­tle­ments. This in­cludes net­work ex­ten­sions and me­tered wa­ter con­nec­tions, and the im­prove­ment of wa­ter sup­plies at both a house­hold and plot lev­el with the in­stal­la­tion of pub­lic stand­pipes and wa­ter kiosks. Every­one on the trip de­scribed it as a life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and they all came back home with mixed feel­ings. Proud of the work that’s be­ing done, over­whelmed by the heart­warm­ing wel­come of Kenyans at the schools and com­mu­ni­ties vis­it­ed… but at the same time with the urge to keep help­ing be­cause there is still so much to do. We are sure that the eight of them, Joseph Fer­nan­des, Alex Tay­lor, Eliz­a­beth Don­narum­ma, Craig Cul­shaw, Dean John­son, Hol­ly Airey, David Budd and Kathryn Kind­ness, re­turned back home mo­ti­vat­ed, full of pride and want­i­ng to share their ex­pe­ri­ence with every­one.

Andreas Sziedat, Central Services Team Leader,
Basel (Switzer­land)

An­dreas Sziedat, Cen­tral Ser­vices team leader based at Basel head­quar­ters, keeps every­thing run­ning smooth­ly at the of­fices in Basel and Zurich. An­dreas is re­spon­si­ble for the fa­cil­i­ty man­age­ment, the re­cep­tion­ist and clean­ing teams, the cafe­te­ria cater­ing con­cept and the com­pa­ny cars. He also takes care of the set­up of new of­fices, of­fice moves for em­ploy­ees, space plan­ning and lo­gis­tics for com­pa­ny events. Dur­ing the sev­en years An­dreas has been work­ing for Dufry, he was part of the team that or­ga­nized the ma­jor of­fice move in 2013 to the cur­rent Dufry Head­quar­ters in Basel and han­dled the ne­go­ti­a­tion for the ex­ten­sion of the lease agree­ment and for the sub­lease of two of­fice floors to ex­ter­nal com­pa­nies. An­dreas man­ages the re­la­tion­ships with the of­fice land­lords in Basel and Zurich, the sub­tenants, main­te­nance and cater­ing com­pa­nies. He learnt dur­ing his time in ho­tel train­ing how to be con­sis­tent­ly friend­ly, po­lite and re­spect­ful, but at the same time as­sertive and de­ter­mined, both to­wards ser­vice providers as well as to­wards in­ter­nal em­ploy­ees and man­age­ment. An­dreas loves his very di­verse role, es­pe­cial­ly the con­tact he has with teams and con­tacts in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. His cre­do is to ful­fill re­quests and solve prob­lems in a fast, ef­fi­cient man­ner. On top of all this, An­dreas is study­ing real es­tate econ­o­my to widen his un­der­stand­ing of the real es­tate busi­ness. An­dreas en­joys spend­ing his time off with his wife and one-year-old son. As the son of a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball play­er who played in the Ger­man club of Hertha BSC, his hob­by is of course foot­ball!

Ana Maria Ascarate, Sales assistant,
Car­ras­co Air­port (Uruguay)

Hav­ing worked for the com­pa­ny for over 25 years at Car­ras­co Air­port in Uruguay should give Ana María enough cred­it to be in our World of Fame.Nev­er­the­less, it is her love and pas­sion for the work and her pos­i­tive out­look that she ra­di­ates to all those around her that have won her a place on this oc­ca­sion. A high­ly re­spect­ed mem­ber of the team, no one ex­em­pli­fies the val­ues we aim to see in the new gen­er­a­tions more than she does! She is a true am­bas­sador of the core pil­lars of ONE­DUFRY: care, show­case and ef­fi­cien­cy. Thank you Ana María for your life-long ded­i­ca­tion and the cus­tomer-fo­cused at­ti­tude you demon­strate each and every day!

Francisco Javier Velasco, Sandra Martínez and Borja Sánchez,
(from left to right)
Madrid of­fice (Spain)

It was com­plete­ly by chance that we dis­cov­ered we have the Roger Fed­er­er of ping-pong – or ta­ble ten­nis – amongst us! In the con­text of the Spon­sor­ship of the ATP Ten­nis tour­na­ment, Mu­tua Madrid Open, the Dufry Madrid of­fice or­ga­nized an in­for­mal ta­ble ten­nis com­pe­ti­tion to cel­e­brate the event. With 48 par­tic­ipants in the sin­gles and dou­bles cat­e­gories, Fran­cis­co Javier Ve­las­co in the sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion, and San­dra Martínez and Bor­ja Sánchez in dou­bles, were crowned as the first Dufry Madrid Table Ten­nis cham­pi­ons. Even though the com­pe­ti­tion was tough and there were no easy match­es, our cham­pi­ons proved them­selves ready and able to go all the way and are now wait­ing to take on ri­vals from oth­er Dufry lo­ca­tions. Are you up to the chal­lenge?