Dubai: For passengers who need to buy last-minute gifts before boarding the plane, or those who simply want to snap up some tax-free goodies, shopping options at the airport are a huge draw.
A new survey has recently asked travellers which among the hundreds of aviation hubs around the world have a really strong retail appeal and Dubai has been voted as one of the best.
According to the 2017 edition of Skytrax World Airport Awards, Dubai International is rated the sixth best airport in the world for shopping, beating other leading travel hubs.
Bringing home the crown as the best airport for shopping is London Heathrow, followed by Seoul Incheon, Hong Kong, Singapore Changi and Doha Hamad in the top five. Rounding up the top ten are Amsterdam, Schiphol, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt and Zurich.
Dubai airport is home to Dubai Duty Free (DDF), which has also received other related accolades.
In December last year, the Global TravelLer (GT) US Awards granted DDF the “Best Duty Free Shops” trophy for the tenth consecutive year. The recognition was based on the results of a survey that attracted more than 22,000 responses gathered between January and August 2016.
The annual World Airport Awards by Skytrax is said to be the “Oscars of the aviation industry”, taking into account the feedback from 13.82 million airport survey questionnaires completed by 105 different nationalities of airline customers.
Out of the 550 airports, Singapore’s Changi emerged as the best airport overall, for the fifth consecutive year. Changi Airport logs 5,000 arrivals and departures a week by 80 international airlines.
