John joined Aer Rianta in 1977 having worked with two American Multinationals, Bechtel and Merck Inc. He went to Dubai in 1983 as part of the team that set up Dubai Duty Free and stayed on as Deputy General Manager until 1990.

He then joined Aer Rianta International and held the position of Director and General Manager at Moscow Duty Free which was then ARI’s largest business unit. In 1992 he transferred to Bahrain as General Manager of Bahrain Duty Free. The following year he was instrumental in establishing Aer Rianta International Middle East and held the position of Managing Director until he retired in December 2010. During John’s time at ARIME it grew to become the largest international operator in the Middle East with the greatest geographical footprint and turnover just short of one billion US Dollars.

John was instrumental in establishing MEDFA and was elected its first President in 2001. He has spoken at a number of trade conferences including ACI, The Trinity Forum, TFWA Asia Pacific & GATE ONE2ONE and MEDFA.

Erik was born in Rotterdam in 1966 and graduated Business Economics in 1989 at the Erasmus University. He accumulated huge commercial strategic experience during positions at companies as Foot Locker, Levi Strauss and Asics, as well on retail as on the wholesale part of the business. Erik moved into travel retail with Dufry Eurasia, based in Sharjah U.A.E., in June 2007. At present time, Erik is leading Dufry’s operations in the Middle East, India and Asia Pacific, where his main focus has been, is and will be, people. It is all about people. Erik believes that if you are able to keep your people productive and happy, you will go a long way!

Paul Topping has been in the duty free business for over 25 years. During this time he has held a number of senior roles, including Managing Director at Alpha Retail International, Managing Director Alpha Asia, President Asia for Aldeasa and Director South East Asia for Gebr Heinemann.

He played a very important role in the public listing of Alpha Airports Group on the UK stock market and was responsible for creating Alpha International’s retail business in the USA, Europe and Asia. This included the first PPP (public private partnership) airport in India, at Cochin, and Orlando Sanford Airport in the USA.

Alpha was the first international retailer to operate in India and Paul was instrumental in creating awareness of the country’s potential by running two successful conferences. He was one of the two founders of the Travel Retail Tsunami charity, supported by the travel retail industry, which built a new village in Sri Lanka to house people made homeless by the December 2004 tsunami. Paul is currently running the “Educate to Protect” campaign to help children to overcome barriers of race, religion and economic hardship.

Paul is an independent main board director of Flemingo International; he is also the part-owner & director of Bangalore Soma Winery and CEO of Tractopping, a travel retail consultancy. He is known as The Wine Man in Sri Lanka, given his involvement in the wine industry in the country over the last ten years. Paul also writes under his pen name, the Whinging Pom.