SOUTH KOREA. Visitor departures by South Korean nationals surged +22.4% year-on-year in January to 2,866,780 – the second-equal strongest monthly increase since March 2017.
But the picture was far less rosy for Chinese tourism. Chinese arrivals fell -46.0% to 305,127, a 31.9% share of total visitors. The Chinese business is yet to recover from the political impact of the THAAD anti-missile system controversy between China and South Korea last year.
Japanese arrivals in January grew +7.9% to 167,083, a 17.5% share.
South Korean travel retail is overwhelmingly reliant on those three nationalities.
Despite the Chinese visitor slump, the South Korean duty free market posted a +42.4% year-on-year increase in January revenues to US$1.38 billion in January. That seeming contradiction is accounted for by the sustained rampant growth of the daigou (shuttle trader) business.
As reported, duty free sales to overseas customers surged by +50.9% in January to reach US$1.06 billion, exceeding the US$1 billion mark for the first time.
However, the number of shoppers from overseas fell sharply (-19.9%) to 1.34 million, while the average transaction value per person leapt by +88.6% to US$794.30, according to the association.
As reported, Korean departures rose +18.4% in 2017, while Chinese arrivals fell -48.3% and Japanese arrivals edged ahead by +0.6%.
