Airports of Thailand Plc has postponed the auction of monopoly concessions for airport duty-free shops and commercial areas while it hears the arguments of groups favouring a more open system.
AoT president Nitinai Sirismatthakarn said on Monday that the postponement would enable other parties to share their opinions and reasons for opposing the auction, and AoT would then answer all their questions.
Afterwards documents for the auctions would be sold, he said. He expected AoT to clear all doubts in a few weeks. AoT earlier planned to sell printed auction terms from March 19 to April 1.
Mr Nitinai was adamant AoT had thoroughly studied relevant information before deciding to grant a single concession for the duty-free shops at Suvarnabhumi, Phuket, Hat Yai and Chiang Mai airports and another single concession for commercial areas at Suvarnabhumi airport.
On Friday the government announced it had instructed AoT to revise the auction plans, citing criticism that a single concessionaire for each of the two airport contracts was monopolistic.
AoT argued that approving only single operator concessions for airport duty-free shops and commercial areas would enable the concessionaire to maintain any unprofitable outlets with the help of profits from the shops at other airports.
Having a larger number of outlets would also give the concessionaire greater bargaining power when dealing with suppliers and ensure the shops were internationally competitive, according to AoT. (continues below)
Allowing many duty-free shop operators at airports would only confuse travellers, because they would offer different promotions for the same products. Operators at different locations could also suffer losses due to the differing numbers of travellers, potential customers, channelled through the various gates, Mr Nitinai said.
He still expected AoT would be able to finalise the new duty-free shop concessions by the end of September.
He also said AoT was expanding the airport duty-free pickup counters of operators in downtown areas, to prevent a monopolisation of the business.
