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Motta expects stability and ‘no big surprises’ after healthier 2017


By all accounts, last year was much better for Motta Internacional and the Latin American DF&TR markets than in 2016. While the retailer is refusing to get carried away, it is optimistic of performing well in the forthcoming Tocumen Airport T2 tender. Andrew Pentol reports.


D


uring last year’s IAADFS education session in Orlando, Chairman of the


Board and Motta Internacional CEO Erasmo Orillac said he foresaw ‘no major crises’ across Latin America in 2017. With currencies such as the Chilean Peso registering vast improvements and the price of fuel and general state of governments stabilising, it was easy to see why. Ultimately, LATAM travel retail and duty free sales rose by approximately 30% in 2017, mirroring gains made in the first quarter, so Orillac’s optimism was well informed. Wearing his Motta Internacional


hat, the same positive sentiments echoed across the company’s business. The Attenza Duty Free chain of airport and border shops spans more than 26 operations in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago. The company also supplies airport outlets operated by charitable organisations in Costa Rica and Guatemala. Orillac tells TRBusiness: “All in all,


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we had a much better 2017 than the previous year. We definitely noticed more people coming back into our stores.” Referring to an initiative aimed at millennials under the age of 35, which allows customers to buy or reserve merchandise online and collect at the airport, Orillac reveals this represented around 8% of total sales in 2017. “It is growing every year. It began


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with 1% and has moved to 8% over the past three years. We are targeting these people with special offers and it has proven successful.”


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Performance evaluation In conversation with TRBusiness, he evaluates the performance of the business in 2017 on a country- by-country basis. He begins in Colombia, where Motta runs stores in El Dorado International Airport (Bogota) alongside the Dufry/DFASS joint-venture, which kicked-in last year, and at Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport (Cali). “In Colombia, people got used to the Peso being at 3,000 against the


Erasmo Orillac, CEO, Motta Internacional


TRBUSINESS 45


exchange rates and started travelling and purchasing again so we had a much better year.” In Ecuador across its Quito operations at Mariscal Sucre International Airport, where business is almost 50% arrivals and 50% departures, things are going ‘quite well’. This has been the case particularly in the liquor category, which has been ‘outstanding’. He says: “Taxes are high in Ecuador, so the price differential


“All in all, we had a much better 2017 than the previous year. We definitely noticed more people coming back into our stores.”


US dollar, so started to travel more,” Orillac recalls. “They quickly went from contending with an 1,800 or 1,900 Peso [versus the US dollar] to 3,000 in about two years. “People got used to the new


Above: The business split is almost 50% arrivals and 50% departures in Quito Airport.


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