Planet Money - The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

(Note: This episode originally ran in 2018.)Is it really cheaper to shop at an airport Duty Free store? And why are so many of them alike?In the 1940s, if you were flying from New York City to London or Paris you would find yourself making a pit stop for fuel on the western coast of Ireland. The Shannon airport at the time wasn't much to look at, but the passengers arriving there were movie stars and celebrities, basically the super rich. And the people of Shannon realized pretty quickly that they needed to upgrade the local amenities for their wealthy clientele. They hired a man named Brendan O'Regan to make it happen. Being the quick-thinking entrepreneur that he was, O'Regan convinced the Irish government to create a tax loophole. And thus, duty free stores were born. Today on the show, we follow the surprising origin of duty free, and try to answer the question: Are they really saving you any money?Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Hey, I'm just leaving a voice memo for myself. I'm in the Shannon Airport in Shannon, Ireland, on my way back to the United States, to New York. There is this picture wall, giant pictures of all the famous people who have come through here. So, you know, they have like John F. Kennedy and there's Fidel Castro and Boris Yeltsin. And there is one photo that was sort of amazing. There's a picture of the President of Ireland

and next to him is someone called Dr. Brendan O'Regan. And he's sort of out of focus. You can see he's wearing a natty suit. He's got a nice little pocket square. And it says that Dr. O'Regan was the person responsible for this airport, for basically developing the Shannon International Airport. And most importantly, he created

the world's first airport duty-free shop. You know, the duty-free shop, the place where you get the perfume and the chocolates and all the liquor. First one was here. And before I got on the flight, I just wanted to rush quickly over and take a look at what

was the world's first duty free. A lot of scarves, a little jewelry. Where's the perfume? Hello darling. How's it going? This is Jessie Baker. I'm buying sheep. Oh they're adorable.

A cliche but my children won't judge. I think duty free shops are supported on people who forgot to get gifts for their children. I didn't forget. I just been busy. Hahaha! You getting them at the duty-free shop. Hahaha! Hey, no shame here. I bought chocolates for my kids. One, two, oh six, to New York. That's my flight. I gotta go.

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Robert Smith here with international jet setter and former duty-free addict Taryn Duffin. This is true back in my corporate days I did spend a lot of time and money in duty-free shops. It seems like these days we're locked in this epic battle between those who want free trade across borders and those who want to put up barriers. An early skirmish in this economic war happened at an airport along the banks of the Shannon River in Ireland. Today on the show, we have the story of Brendan O'Regan,

a former bartender turned entrepreneur who said, let the world have its crevasse tax-free. And we'll answer the question I know that I've asked over and over again. Are we really saving any money at the duty-free shop? This message comes from Wyse, the app for doing things in other currencies. Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wyse, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit Wyze.com. TNCs apply.

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Start your financial future today. Search money for couples wherever you listen. The story of Duty Free starts with a bit of Irish luck. In the 1940s, when people were traveling from New York to London or Paris, they were in these propeller planes. And to refuel, they had to land in the first runway they saw after crossing the Atlantic. And that was Western Ireland, County Clare, along the Shannon River. And so here was this former mudflat that all of a sudden became the grand gateway to Europe. In the 40s and 50s, every famous person that crossed the Atlantic almost certainly wound

up going through Shannon. So movie stars, presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens, they all landed in Shannon. They all had to land at Shannon Airport. Brian O'Connell was a businessman in the region, still lives there, and he says that everyone realized pretty quickly that they needed to upgrade the local amenities for all these movie stars. In those days, the airplane ride from the United States was long and uncomfortable and bumpy. Sometimes it was even in these flying boats, basically planes that would land on water. You were probably tired, you could be cold because obviously the particularly the flying boats flew quite low over the

Atlantic compared with planes today. So people were looking forward particularly to good food and good drink. This is when our duty-free hero, Dr. Brendan O'Regan, enters the story. Don't let the doctor part fool you. It is an honorary degree. Brendan O'Regan had been a bartender, a hotel clerk, a caterer. And when the Shannon Airport realized that all the movie stars were coming, they needed someone quick. They hired Brendan O'Regan to feed them. He was a man who was very soft spoken, quiet, calm. There was no nonsense about him.

When the movie stars got their pictures taken, you could sometimes see O'Regan in the background. He's a dapper man with sandy hair, slicked back. O'Regan had this knack for promotion from the very beginning. Rather than continental cuisine, which is what they were serving at airports everywhere, he served Irish food. But he dolled it up with all these place names. Oh, look, this is Carrie Lamb and Dublin prawns

and limerick butter. And when he would serve whiskey in the coffee, he topped it off with this thick layer of local cream and he named it the very first Irish coffee. Wait, O'Regan created the very first Irish coffee? It's delicious. Irish coffee is the best. There at the Shannon Airport.

And he ran this little kiosk next to the restaurant and it was nothing really. Little mini bottles of whiskey and trinkets and cheap stuff. But the important point here is that everything was always taxed back in those days. Well, not everything, because Oregon noticed that there was this loophole. In the British Isles, it had been a tradition that sailors about to head off on a long sea voyage

could bring on board rum and whiskey without paying duties. Yep. Which, I don't know, why would they do that? Just to keep the crews happy? I think that's right. I'd suggest that must have been an element of it or have them sleep off a lot of the time. I don't know, but that was a tradition that went way back to I think 17th century or way, way, way back,

hundreds of years. And strangely, this loophole was still in effect in O'Regan's day. In 1950, he was on a trip to the United States, and he decides not to fly back to Shannon, but to take a cruise ship, the SS America. And O'Regan notices when he's on board that the alcohol in the ship is way less expensive than the stuff he's been serving at the airport. All this alcohol and tobacco has been sold duty-free.

Because they were in international waters, this is like the law of the high seas. They were in the high seas. So he said, wait, now we're competing with these guys by air. It's not fair that I can't have the same tax advantages they had. And this was the genius of Brendan O'Regan. He went to the Irish government and he said, essentially, what are airplanes but boats of the sky? That's kind of true. True. And what are airline passengers but modern-day sailors of the clouds? Right.

Do they not also deserve their tax-free rum and perfume and Haribo brand gummy bears? They're not Haribo brand gummy bears. His exact words are lost to history. But we do know that a lot of people in the Irish government said, wait, tax- free? Are you kidding me? Because every department of finance, every customs people worldwide resist giving away tax revenue. Particularly in this case, morally, the idea of who's benefiting out of this wealthy people who fly the Atlantic in planes. I mean, that's only a tiny percentage of the population. Why should we do any good for them? The government stood to lose a lot of money if they went with this tax-free scheme because

in some cases when you buy alcohol, most of the price tag is actually taxes. Yeah, for example, I mean, just even taking today, if you buy a bottle of wine down the street here in the United States, there is a duty added to the cost of that wine if the wine comes from overseas. But even if the wine is made in the United States, there is a federal excise tax on alcohol added to the price. And then each and every state adds their own excise taxes to the wine. And this is all hidden in the price tag. Plus, then when you bring the wine to the counter, often you have to pay sales tax again on the wine. And this is all hidden in the price tag. Plus, then when you bring the wine to the counter, often you have to pay sales tax again on the total. Brendan O'Regan

said to the Irish government, yes, yes, you will lose some money in taxes. But in the long run, if we do this, we'll attract people to come to Shannon. If we track people to come to Shannon, they'll see Ireland, some of them might decide to go and visit the place. We'll make people aware of Irish goods. Irish whiskey was not properly, it was minuscule in the US compared with Scotch whiskey. And we'll make money because I've the franchisee of this government owned airport. And you're making the profits, so I'll make you a lot more profits and particularly I'll make you dollar profits. Dollar profits. So Ireland said alright let's try it

but we are keeping you on a very short leash. O'Regan opened the first duty-free shop in the Shannon Airport in 1951. Okay. It was only for passengers and he did this trick that you will recognize from today. It was located between the lounge and the restaurant so you had to walk through it to get to anything. I hate that. No, this is brilliant. And just like he'd promised the government, he featured local foods and crafts. I saw an early photo hanging in the airport.

There's a picture of Gene Kelly, the old dancer from the old days, buying butter or cheese or something, and he's at the duty free, and they're selling what looks like ham, bacon, honey, cheese, jam, and eggs. Wait, was this like a farmer's market in the airport? I think the local stuff was kind of for show because honestly from the beginning, this was all about cigarettes and alcohol.

Whiskey and smokes were apparently one third the price you would pay outside the airport. It was so cheap that the Irish government was paranoid that Irish gangs would try to smuggle alcohol out of the airport. I mean, you could make a fortune, right? They required O'Regan to take inventory three times a day. He had to account for every single bottle. If he accidentally dropped or misplaced a single bottle, he would have to pay all the taxes on it. And this was a hit. Within just six months, O'Regan had to expand the store because all of these other manufacturers

wanted their products in there too. I mean, this was a captive market of rich people on vacation. So in came the Leica cameras and the Omega Swiss watches. And even relatively inexpensive products discovered that they could get some of that airport glamor by just getting placed between the Chanel number five and the cuckoo clocks.

At least, that's what Mr. Tobler of Switzerland thought. Mr. Tobler was a real person. Wait, Mr. Tobler? Theodore Tobler, Theodore Tobler, who created the chocolate bar. Not just any chocolate bar, the Toblerone, a triangular prism of deliciousness. It was sold in that very first Shannon duty-free shop.

Tom Armitage is an executive with Mondalese International, which owns Toblerone. The word comes from the combination, obviously, of his surname. Tobler. With the Italian word torrone, which means, it's kind of like nuca. It's kind of like that nutty, chewy, toffee

kind of construction. Nougat. We'd say nougat. Nougat? Sorry, that's my British name. Nougat? I don't think I've ever said it out loud. Nougat. Nougat. I just called it nougat, but we can call it nugget if you... Nugget, nougat. Anyway, but I know that duty-free was a huge break for the chocolate bar, which is odd

because there aren't really heavy duties and taxes on chocolate, not like alcohol. But it did fit the duty-free aesthetic. It was kind of weird, fancy looking, yet you could buy it with leftover change in your pocket from what you didn't spend on that Swiss watch. Exactly. It would take a few more years for Toblerone and the duty-free concept to

spread worldwide. All these international delegations would visit a Reagan shop and they saw how much he was making and they thought, wait a minute, anyone could do this. Amsterdam opened the second duty-free shop in the world in their airport in 1957. In 1962, a private company DFS opened the first duty-free shop in the world in their airport in 1957. In 1962, a private company, DFS, opened the first duty-free shop in the United States, in Hawaii. Tom Armitage, the Toblerone guy, says that the numbers just took off from there. Duty-free stores will do $70 billion worth of business just this year.

Wow. Five billion of that is candy, and Tom will give you the chocolate stats all day long If you thought of duty-free as a country It would be the ninth biggest Chocolate market in the world Wow, okay, the ninth biggest chocolate market in the world effectively just Just behind France and just ahead of India

So more people buy chocolate and duty-free than buy chocolate in India. By value. That's right. These days, Toblerone makes special chocolate bars specifically designed for duty-free. And it's actually, if you think about it, the perfect place for test marketing and data gathering.

It's the one kind of store where you know which customers will show up when. So if the flight from Paris to New York JFK takes off at 1.28 p.m., then the duty-free store is filled with Americans right at noon. And you can test new products on them. So we've done dark chocolate Toblerone, milk chocolate Toblerone, crunchy almond Toblerone, fruit and nuts Toblerone, messaging, for example, on the Toblerone, milk chocolate Toblerone, crunchy almond Toblerone, fruit and nuts Toblerone, messaging for example on the Toblerone sleeve.

Wait, wait, what does the message say? I forgot to get you a gift in Paris and here's a Toblerone I got at the airport? It would say for example, I love you or thinking of you. The duty-free store concept, the idea behind it, became so big, so powerful in marketing that people sort of forgot about that original duty-free shop in the Shannon Airport. And once long-range passenger jets were invented, not as many people needed to stop over in rural Ireland for an Irish coffee. And because Brendan O'Regan didn't try to own the concept. He sadly did not become a duty-free billionaire,

but other businessmen would. But you know, O'Regan remained a hero of Ireland. He helped set up tax-free manufacturing zones. He became obsessed with the way that trade could help world peace. And he set up all of these two-way peace exchanges between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that people say were really instrumental in creating the peace process there.

Brian O'Connell has just published a new biography of Brendan O'Regan. So he's a little biased. But he believes that that first little store in the airport changed the world. If he hadn't done it, there would be no airport duty-free business in the world. It wouldn't have taken off, in my opinion. Really? The argument that, you know, why are we doing favors for wealthy people who are traveling would have been a

big factor. When you put it that way, who would approve that now? Yeah. You'd have shops at airports, but the duty-free industry would not have developed. It was O'Regan's gift to all of us travelers. But exactly how generous a gift was it? We'll have the answer after the break.

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Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. So that was the history of duty-free, but now the psychology of Duty Free. Because when I walk through these places in airport, there's this strange feeling that comes over me. I feel like I'm part of this exclusive club. I've just paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket. I've presented my passport. There's people with guns guarding it.

And then I walk through and it's so bright. And it's filled with all these vices of cigarettes and alcohol. So many scotches, so many scotches and whiskeys. And also you're a little bored. So it's basically the classic setup to spend too much money. By design. Obviously. We actually tried to find a definitive study to find out how much of a break you're really getting at duty-free. Yes, there are no taxes, but you have to pay for all this very expensive airport retail space. So it's almost impossible to figure out the bottom line. Every duty-free store has different prices, different exchange

rates, and the tax break depends on how much tax you usually pay back at home. So I tried to get at least some anecdotal data. I was traveling with my family through the Milan airport in Italy and my daughter Elsie and I spent an hour logging all the prices. Here's a carton of Camel cigarettes. 39.5 euros. Probassi VSOP. 48.5 euros. Jamison? 24 euros. Don't buy that. That could be a deal. 17 euros. 18.2 euros. You saved 7.8 euros. And what was your verdict on duty-free? It depends. I know that is not the answer you want to hear.

I will tell you that tax-free cigarettes are criminally cheap, under $5 a pack, and they're almost three times that here in New York City. So if you want cigarettes, you should buy cigarettes in duty-free. But other deals are harder to find. So my daughter, Elsie, is a expert in makeup. Okay, so Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation.

Natural, silky, lightweight fluid. 49 euros, which is really expensive. Wow, like 49 euros for this tiny little foundation? No, for that one. That's still not that much. It's so expensive. No, no, that's just the display one. This is the one you buy. I would never pay that much. But I checked here in New York and not the worst price for Giorgio Armani. So that's a buy. But when it comes to alcohol, there is no logic. The American whiskeys in Milan

are two-thirds the price of what you would pay here in the United States. Wait, even though they ship it all the way to Milan? And then you have to carry it all the way back? True. But Corvassie, from France, next door to Italy, was more expensive in the duty-free than is here in New York. And Toblerone's, I hate to disappoint you, were almost double the U.S. price. Wait, so if we aren't always getting a huge deal on products

and the governments are losing out on tax revenue, then what's the point? Well, here's my theory on this. It's that, you know, when Ireland first started duty free, it was this true bargain for the flyer. And Ireland got all these benefits from the extra tourist business. But then what happens is this sort of race to the bottom. Every other airport starts to offer the exact same tax breaks just to compete. And then once everyone has a duty-free shop, then there's pressure just to make your airport's duty-free shop bigger and brighter and fancier. Exactly. Everyone ends up with this sort of expensive

shopping mall and somewhere in all of this the tax break concept just sort of gets lost. Prices start to sneak back up because who can really tell? And suddenly the people making the money are not the travelers, but the shops themselves and the airports, which you'll notice are now redesigning themselves to provide even more space for duty-free. Okay, Cosmopolitans, if you spot a glitch in the international trade system, we would love to hear about it. We are at Planet Money in the usual places and planetmoneyatnpr.org on email.

This episode of Planet Money was originally produced by Sally Helm and Megan Tan and edited by Bryant Ertstat. This version was produced by Willa Rubin. Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark. I'm Jeff Guowe. I'm Karen Duffin. And I'm Robert Smith. Thanks for listening.

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