ASUR to issue duty free tender for Cancun and Cozumel airports in June

The WDFG (Aldeasa) walk-through duty free store in Cancun airport.

The WDFG (Aldeasa) walk-through duty free store in Cancun airport.

 

Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR) will be issuing a tender for a Master Concessionaire to operate the duty free concessions at Cancun and Cozumel airports, which are due to expire in May 2017. The privatized airports have been operated by ASUR since 1999.

“We will have the tender documents out no later than June of this year,” Manuel Gutiérrez Sola, Chief Commercial Officer of Grupo Aeroportuario Del Sureste, told TMI during the Duty Free Show of the Americas last week.

The new contract will be for a period of ten years and will include all of the current terminals in Cancun Airport, as well as the new terminal 4 now under construction, says Gutiérrez.

The current concession contract was originally signed with Aldeasa in 2001, which now operates under World Duty Free Group, which itself has been acquired by Dufry.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto officially inaugurated the recently renovated and extended Terminal 3 at Cancun International Airport on March 13.

ASUR logoASUR invested more than 1,000 million Mexican pesos (approx. US$57 million) in refurbishing Terminal 3, adding six new bridges to accommodate wide body aircraft increasing capacity of the terminal to 10 million passengers, says Gutiérrez.

Construction on the new Terminal 4, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, continues on schedule, he says. ASUR will invest $200 millon in the new 52,000 sqm terminal. The first phase is due for completion by Q1 of 2018.

The new terminal will have a capacity of 6.5 million passengers in its first phase, eventually increasing to 25 million passengers.
With the recently opened T3 and the new T4, Cancun airport capacity will increase to more than 35 million passengers. In 2015, the airport delivered a strong 12.3% increase in passenger traffic, reaching 19.6 million. International traffic reached 13.6 million, up by 13%. Traffic a Cozumel airport reached 554,000, up by 7.6% International traffic accounted for 443,700 of the total.

Aldeasa / World Duty Free Group (now owned by Dufry) won the international tender to operate duty free stores in Cancun in 2001 and have been operating since that date.