Tax setback to Swiss arrivals plan

Nicole Mezzasalma

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The need for changes to tax legislation has delayed Swiss plans to introduce arrivals duty-free stores

Swiss airport operators including Zürich airport authority Unique have suffered a new setback in their plans to open duty-free arrivals stores. Unique has been lobbying the Swiss government for eight years to introduce changes to the tax legislation that would allow the introduction of arrivals duty-free shopping at the country’s airports, but although the country’s Customs authority has recognised the need for the tax regulations to change, this requires the legislation to go through parliament again, which has delayed the process.

Unique chief commercial officer Peter Eriksson told DFNIonline.com: “Decisions have been taken on all levels in parliament and we had hoped that we would be able to get [the changes] through by the end of this year, but this went wrong. It will take a little more time than we expected. Our best-case scenario of having something up and running by the end of the year will not be met, and we probably won’t be able to open anything before the middle of 2009. I also see that Canada is pushing to get arrivals duty-free stores so I think we will use that to help speed up the process. We are going ahead with the planning and construction work for the shop, however, so it will only be a case of changing the store signs and announcing them as duty-free with a different selection of merchandise [when the legal issues have been resolved]."

Eriksson added that Unique still plans to open a duty-paid arrivals store in early 2009, which will offer “good prices and a good merchandise offer for the convenience of travellers”.