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CHINESE LUXURY SHOPPERS RETURNED TO DUTY-FREE HAINAN ISLAND IN DROVES

By Tony Zhu

9-1-2023



Source: Xinhua News Agency

Duty-free luxury shoppers have returned to China’s Hainan province in droves just two weeks after Beijing scrapped its zero-Covid policy in early December last year.

During the three-day New Year holiday, Hainan provincial capital Haikou’s Customs has processed RMB422 million (USD61m) in offshore duty-free spending, 43,000 customers and 476,000 items.

Average daily sales of duty-free goods on the island province have reached RMB140m during the New Year holiday with a per-capita shopping spend of RMB9,816, bouncing back to the same level achieved last year, according to Haikou Customs.

Since strict Covid restrictions were lifted, Hainan has seen average daily sales exceeding RMB100m, an obvious sign of market revival.

Shoppers started to return one week ahead of the New Year holiday, duty-free stores on Hainan reported a foot traffic increase of more than 30 percent compared to the previous week.

International travel restrictions in the past three years drove many Chinese consumers to shop for luxury items from Hainan island which enjoys duty-free status.

In 2021, Hainan accounted for 13 percent of China's domestic luxury spend, versus 6 percent pre-pandemic.

The province was the driving engine for global travel retails in 2020 and 2021 when international borders were shut due to the Covid pandemic.

However, Beijing’s continuing zero-Covid policy in 2022 impacted China’s domestic tourism and hospitality sector severely. The global travel retail market was driven instead by markets in Europe, Middle East and the Americas that had fully reopened.

Hainan has continued to invest heavily in travel retails though. It opened the world’s biggest duty-free shopping centre in Haikou city in late October last year, spanning 280,000sqm and boasting more than 800 international and domestic brands.

Another duty-free shopping centre is scheduled to open in Wanning city this month, adding to the existing 11 hubs, including six in Haikou, four in Sanya and one in Qionghai city.

(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)

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