SINGAPORE. Singapore Changi Airport concession sales climbed by a healthy +7.6% year-on-year in 2017 to S$2.5 billion (US$1.9 billion), a new record. Changi Airport Group (CAG) revealed the figure as it announced the latest winners of its popular ‘Be A Changi Millionaire’ campaign.
In 2017, travellers from China, Singapore, Indonesia, India and the UK were the highest spending shoppers at Changi Airport, with Chinese and Singaporeans accounting for more than half of total sales. Perfumes & cosmetics and liquor & tobacco were the most popular product categories, followed by luxury goods, electronics and confectionery. The airport and its partners handled over 57 million transactions in 2017, averaging about 158,000 transactions per day.
Sales from Changi Airport’s online duty-free platform iShopChangi soared by +60% year-on-year. iShopChangi currently offers a selection of 10,000 product items from 500 brands, and has recently introduced a home delivery service for Singaporean passengers.
2017 also saw the introduction of several new retail initiatives. Changi introduced its first integrated duty free shopping zone in the new Terminal 4. The airport also welcomed its largest landside and multi-brand restaurant, SORA, as well as a world-first Louis Vuitton duplex store in an airport.
CAG Executive Vice President of Commercial Lim Peck Hoon said: “Retail plays a crucial role at Changi Airport because the revenue helps to keep the aeronautical charges at Changi competitive for airlines. The growth in air traffic has allowed a bigger audience to gain exposure to Changi’s retail offerings.
“Our 2017 retail performance is mainly due to an effective retail mix guided by our passengers’ shopping needs and aspirations, as well as the various retail promotions that helped to lend novelty and drive buzz at Changi Airport. We thank passengers for their support and confidence in Changi’s shopping proposition, and will strive to make the Changi shopping experience an even more exciting one in the years ahead.”
CAG also announced the latest Changi Millionaire and the first ever car prize winner of the Be a Changi Millionaire shopping promotion. For the first time in the history of the campaign, the finalists worked in pairs to come through four rounds of games on stage to emerge as winners. This is also the first time that Changi Airport has presented a luxury car as a prize for its major shopping campaign.
Oddie Rehatta, 45, from Purwakarta, Indonesia won the S$1 million while Zhang Xuchao, 26, from Beijing, China won the car prize of a Volvo S90 T5 luxury sedan. The other 12 finalists were from Cambodia, China, Indonesia and Singapore.
Oddie, who had purchased gifts from DFS for friends during one of his business trips to Singapore last year, said: “I will be putting some money into investments, my business and also make some donations. Importantly, I will bring my family to Mecca.”
Zhang entered the competition after buying beauty products for his girlfriend from The Shilla Duty Free when he visited Singapore in August last year. “I will use the money from encashing the car prize to buy another Volvo when I go back to China,” he said.
The Be a Changi Millionaire shopping promotion is in its eighth edition and has become hugely popular with local residents and international passengers in this period. First launched in 2010, participating entries have nearly doubled from 850,000 per campaign at the start.
The latest draw attracted more than 1.5 million entries from 221 nationalities, with the top three groups of participants from Singapore, China and Indonesia.
To participate in the Millionaire Draw, passengers and airport visitors needed to shop or dine at Changi Airport, and spend a minimum of S$50 in a single receipt. One finalist was picked each month from May to October 2017 for the Grand Draw, with two others picked from qualifying shoppers on iShopChangi and from the list of Platinum members of the Changi Rewards loyalty programme. In addition, six other car prize finalists were also drawn from shoppers who made purchases of more than S$500 in accumulated spend in a single day.
Apart from the two top prize winners, the other finalists for the S$1 million cash prize draw each won S$5,000 in cash, while those in the car draw each won S$1,000 cash. All enjoyed a three-night hotel stay in Singapore, with return airfare provided for non-Singapore residents. The ninth Be a Changi Millionaire campaign will be launched in May.
