Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
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- Mama don’t take my Toblerone (Dark) away - April 22, 2025
- Trail hiking and talking travel retail at the Hainan Expo - April 20, 2025
There’s nothing quite like the Hainan Expo – full name, China International Consumer Products Expo – which ran in the island’s capital, Haikou from 13 to 18 April.
Firstly, there’s the sheer vastness of the event – five sprawling exhibition halls showcasing an almost bewildering array of goods and services across sectors including alcohol, automobiles, culture, healthcare, fashion, technology, tourism, wellness and many others.
A record-breaking 1,767 companies participated in this year’s Expo – including, once more, The Moodie Davitt Report as the only international travel retail media – embracing 4,209 consumer brands from 71 countries and regions, and 60,000 professional buyers (up +10% year-on-year).
The event is hosted by the Hainan Provincial Bureau of International Economic Development (Hainan IEDB), which reckons that events targeting global brands, ecommerce and country-specific suppliers led to the signing of 52 intended cooperation agreements, worth some CNY92 billion (about US12.6 billion), critical business at a time of immense global uncertainty due to the Trump-led trade wars.
I spent three days at the Expo after setting up my Interim Bureau at the excellent Marriott Haikou, slap bang next to the Expo Hall. You practically need a hiking pole and boots to get around each hall but it’s worth the effort to see the incredible advances being made by the Chinese across all the fields I mentioned earlier.
I also managed to spend some quality time with Hainan’s retailers, all of whom had stands at the Expo, including a hugely enjoyable dinner with Fu Qiang (Kevin), who leads powerful Sinopharm-owned CNSC as Chairman and Secretary of the Party Committee. CNSC is keen to expand at home and abroad and Mr Fu has a very nuanced and forward-thinking vision of the opportunities he sees. Watch this space.
Another high point came with my appearance on the first episode of ‘Travel Retail Talks’, the first in an in-house series of livestream shows being organised by The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) Travel Retail. I was honoured to chat on the show – before a live audience of the local ELC Travel Retail Team and, via the livestream, to hundreds of their colleagues worldwide – with Olivier Dubos, appointed as ELC Senior Vice President and General Manager, Travel Retail Worldwide last December.
Olivier brings more than 17 years experience in the beauty sector – much of it in travel retail – to his role and we will need every ounce of the expertise he has gleaned, given the well-documented challenges facing the company and the beauty sector in North Asia.
But, as he made clear both on the livestream and during a more formal interview earlier in the day, the group sees these challenges to be embraced and overcome, with a particular focus on enhancing the experiential aspect of shopping for beauty products. ELC has some very exciting innovations in the pipeline that will help boost its and Hainan’s fortunes in the coming months.
I was also honoured to again address the Hainan Development Holdings and Global Premium Duty Free (GDF) Plaza leadership, management, team, business partners and guests on the opening of their magnificent exhibition space at the Expo.
GDF Plaza has achieved so much since opening its Mova Mall, Haikou store back in January 2021, despite often very testing market conditions. It has done that through a combination of commitment, collaboration – via strong partnerships with brands, with local government, and with Ali Baba and Dufry (Avolta) – innovation and constant promotion of the duty-free offer.
We recently reported on GDF Plaza’s fourth anniversary – showing fantastic images of a multi-dimensional shopping extravaganza. Such imagination, I suggested, is going to be critical going forward if duty-free retailers are going to continue to excite and engage with Hainan visitors.
“Provided Hainan’s duty-free retailers continue to strive to raise the bar in terms of merchandising, product range – not just international brands but also the many outstanding Chinese brands – service quality, online-to-offline activity, convenience and promotions, I believe the future is bright,” I told guests.
“But it can be more than bright. It can be golden if retailers combine the inherent attractions of duty-free shopping with a wider cultural proposition – so-called ‘Duty-Free + – band therefore help to maintain relevance and allure long into the future.”
Duty free + sums it up really, doesn’t it? I feel that not only Hainan but the whole travel retail world has to create something bigger, more surprising, more experiential than what served the industry so well for the past 78 years. All those kilometres of trekking the Hainan Expo halls certainly confirmed to me that much of the required energy will be sourced from China.🏝️
PICTURE GALLERY
