Sanya has built the world's biggest duty-free shop to handle soaring popular demand.

 

The world's biggest duty-free shopping complex will open for trial operation in Sanya, a resort city on South China's tourist island of Hainan, this December in time for next year's Spring Festival's shopping bonanza.

 

The 70,000 square metre shopping center, which is operated by the State-owned duty-free group China Duty Free Group Co, is located in Haitang Bay, about 30 kilometres east of Sanya and home to more than 30 luxury hotels along its 22 kilometres of sandy beach.

 

"We have seen downtown (duty-free) stores, we have seen airport (duty-free) stores, but nothing like this - the huge resort (duty-free) store," said Ian McLernon, regional director of Christian Dior perfumes' travel retail department for Asia-Pacific, at the shopping complex's construction site.

 

Chen Guoqiang, vice-president of China Duty Free, said the new shopping complex was going to be an integrated project with not only duty-free shops, but also restaurants and other entertainment facilities.

 

The International Travel Service Corp, parent company of China Duty Free, is spending CNY 5 billion (USD 805 million) on the project.

 

Setting its grand opening schedule to August 2014, the world's largest duty-free shopping complex can't wait to open its door for trials by the end of this year, right before next Chinese New Year in January, mainly because it's when the "miracle" happens.
 

"Our downtown duty-free store's turnover for last Spring Festival holiday was 2.3 times the year before," said Gu Naxin, marketing director of China Duty Free. He said the 7,000 sq m downtown store broke the daily sales record of CNY 20 million (USD 3.22 million) during last Chinese New Year and the number of shoppers lining up was so long they had to control the flow.

 

At least 45 percent of the number of Hainan's inbound tourists in 2012 - about 3.7 million people - visited Sanya's only duty-free store located downtown and generated sales revenue of CNY 2.04 billion.

 

According to Hainan governor Jiang Dingzhi, the province currently has two duty-free shops, one at the airport of the provincial capital in Haikou and the other in downtown Sanya. But the two stores' total of 14,000 sq m of shopping area couldn't meet customer's needs. "Taking Sanya's downtown (duty-free) store as example, it received a daily average of 30,000 travelers during last Spring Festival holiday, three times the number of its visitors on an average day," Jiang said.
 

The crowded shopping environment and shoppers' frustration at not being always able to buy what they wanted could be solved by adding two more duty-free stores in the province, said Jiang. 

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