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I’m at Hong Kong International Airport, awaiting the long journey home after a fantastic two-week trip around the hottest of travel retail’s hot-spots.
From Ever Rich’s magnificent new downtown duty free store in Taipei, and its grandly ambitious Kinmen Islands project to the energy and drive of Lotte and Shilla in Seoul as they continue to unveil extraordinary growth figures.
From the jaw-dropping scale of the planned HNDF/DFS Mission Hills complex in Haikou to the breath-taking scope and vision of China Duty Free Group’s Haitang Bay International Shopping Complex, it has been a trip to emphatically underline travel retail’s dynamism and, excitingly, still untapped potential in North Asia.
I have written much about China Duty Free Group’s Sanya downtown duty free store in the past and the phenomenal levels of business it is doing.
To see it with my own eyes and to witness a near consumer frenzy (below) that reminded me of the Christmas Eve last-minute shopping rush on London’s Oxford Street multiplied fivefold still took me by surprise. And incredibly, these pictures were not taken during a peak period for the store.
I’ll write more, much more, on this subject in the weeks and months to come, for there is no doubt that offshore duty free shopping in China is rewriting the landscape of our industry. But first I have a plane to catch. After Asia’s travel retail hot spots, it’s time for the big chill of London.
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