CHINA. Chinese travel retail price comparison app Jessica’s Secret has entered a strategic partnership with China’s largest news website, hinews.cn to publish duty free content via ‘The New Hainan App.’
The application offers real-time travel retail price comparisons and releases regular columns and livestream content covering the latest developments and shopping trends from the Hainan Free Trade Port.
The partnership leverages Jessica’s Secret price-comparison data and hinews.cn’s extensive reach and influence to offer an enhanced service platform for Hainan’s booming offshore duty free industry.
The app also serves as a consumer-facing guidebook highlighting the latest travel retail trends, hot products, and popular promotions.
The slogan of the collaboration is “Check out the New Hainan App for duty free goods and tune into Jessica’s Secret to explore duty free shopping worldwide.”
The New Hainan App uses background data from Jessica’s Secret and includes a travel retail price comparison button on the homepage.
The app’s daily ‘Duty Free Product Recommendation’ column sends popular travel retail promotions and product information to Hainan tourists. The New Hainan App also serves as the mobile publishing platform for the Hainan Provincial Financial Media Centre, which is the official publishing arm of The Hainan Free Trade Port.
Jessica’s Secret and hinews.cn have also launched two new columns, the ‘Duty Free Weekly List’ and ‘Duty Free Monthly List.’ The partners will also debut the ‘Most Popular Duty Free Products,’ ‘Lowest-Priced Duty Free Purchases’ and ‘Consumers’ Favourites List’ columns in the coming weeks.
The partners have also launched two live-streaming series, ‘Weekly Shop Exploring’ which features a local reporter visiting the most popular travel retail stores in Hainan; and ‘King Duty Free’ which is a monthly live broadcast that highlights trending topics and shopping tips for Hainan visitors.
The New Hainan App is open to all international travel retail brands and offers advertising opportunities, columns, pop-up windows. Jessica’s Secret will also be publishing regular reports featuring consumer trends, insights and analysis from Hainan’s offshore duty free industry.
“The construction of a diverse content ecosystem plays an important role in discovering new flows and protecting private ones,” commented Jessica’s Secret CEO Mirko Wang. “Retailers and brands can also take this opportunity to achieve precise marketing promotion in China’s Hainan duty free market.”
Hinews.cn was launched in 1999 and is a major regional news website recognised by the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. It currently has more than 17 million users across its channels.
At the start of 2020, hinews.cn struck a partnership with Hainan’s largest newspaper, Nanguo Metropolis Daily, to launch three new media platforms into the region: New Hainan App, Nanguo Metropolis Daily and hinews.cn.
Jessica’s Secret was launched in 2015 and is one of the world’s foremost price comparison apps specific to the travel retail industry. Jessica’s Secret offers real-time price comparison, collected from over 1100 airport stores and downtown duty free shops across 60 countries around the world.
The Moodie Davitt Report — in partnership with Jessica’s Secret — regularly publishes The Jessica’s Secret Index, which provides an indicator of what’s hot with the app’s predominantly younger Chinese traveller user base.
As reported, Hainan province plans to grow its offshore duty free sector to over CNY60 billion (US$9.3 billion) in sales this year, an approximate +83% increase over 2020. The 2021 offshore duty free sector is expected to be boosted by a continuing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic; an expansion of offshore duty free licence holders; and the impending introduction of a new policy allowing Hainan residents to buy certain items duty and tax free without leaving the island.
In June 2020, Chinese authorities released a master plan to boost the building of the Hainan free trade port. The project is driven by the Hainan Provincial Bureau of International Economic Development/Hainan IEDB.
According to the plan — jointly issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council — a free trade port system focusing on trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation will be basically established in Hainan by 2025 and become more mature by 2035.
Hainan Island: Travel retail’s global hotspot The Moodie Davitt Report will publish a Hainan Island Special Report with the China edition of The Magazine in February 2021. Written by Martin Moodie and Dermot Davitt, it will explore how the offshore duty free business in China has become critical to the world’s leading brands across many categories. 海南：旅游零售业的全球焦点 穆迪戴维特报告（Moodie Davitt Report）将于2021年2月随The Magazine的中文版发表《海南特别报道》。该篇由马丁·穆迪（Martin Moodie）和德莫特·戴维特（Dermot Davitt）撰写，将探讨中国的离岸免税业务是如何变得对跨类别的各大全球领先品牌至关重要。 报告将覆盖以下内容：
The report will feature:
Contact Irene@MoodieDavittReport.com to partner with The Moodie Davitt Report for this special edition. |
