HAIKOU / China /, December 23. / TASS /. The opening ceremony of the duty-free shopping festival took place in Haikou City (Hainan Province, South China). According to the city's department of commerce, the event will last from 21 to 30 December.
For 10 days, Haikou duty free shops will provide customers with discounts, as well as a variety of coupons for the purchase of goods. Organizing the festival will help fuel a consumer boom and boost sales of Haikou duty-free shops, according to local officials.
From January to November of this year, the sales of duty free shops in Haikou city exceeded 5.7 billion yuan (about $ 868 million), which is double the figures for the same period last year.
A pilot program for the development of a chain of duty free shops in Hainan province was launched by the PRC government in 2011. According to official customs data, between 2011 and the end of 2019, buyers made more than 16 million purchases in duty-free shops for a total of 53.8 billion yuan (about $ 8.2 billion at the exchange rate at the time of publication of the data). The coronavirus pandemic has led to a slight drop in sales in the first half of this year, but sales have skyrocketed in the second half amid an improvement in the country's epidemiological situation and an influx of Chinese tourists to the province.
Currently, there are four duty-free shops in Hainan Province: two of them are located in the provincial capital, Haikou City, and the rest in Sanya City and the coastal town of Boao in Qionghai District in the northeast of the island. By the end of this year, it is planned to open three more new duty-free shops, all of them will be located in the resort town of Sanya. One will open at the airport and the other two in the suburbs.
From July 1, the quotas for one person for shopping in duty-free shops in Hainan province were increased from 30 thousand to 100 thousand yuan (from $ 4.58 thousand to $ 15.26 thousand at the current exchange rate), as well as from 38 to 45 positions expanded the list of duty-free goods.
