June 27th, 2014 saw the 11th Beijing International Tourism Expo (BITE) hosted by Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development held in China National Convention Centre (CNCC). CDFG and CITS attended the three-day mega event with a shared booth to integrate their advantageous resources in brands, drawing extensive attention of both Chinese and foreign exhibitors with substantial promotion materials, professional services and sound corporate brand images.
On the morning of June 27th, as a representative enterprise in China’s duty free and travel retail industry, CDFG presented at CNCC with its Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall project. In enterprise presentation and interaction of the event, CDFG introduced its three decades of development course, implementation of the Hainan Island offshore duty free policy and in particular, general information about Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall, the world’s largest downtown duty free center. The center saw completion all of the brand invitation and selection work this May. Currently, the decoration of the public zones is drawing to a close, and that of various brand stores is also being accelerated. The center is expected to open for trial operation in September this year.
Representing an investment of RMB 5 billion, Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall covers a floor area of more than 120,000 m2, including a business area of 70,000 m2. With a duty free area up to 45,000 m2, it is the largest single duty free store in the world. The shopping mall combines shopping, entertainment, catering and cultural presentation, and pools about 300 internationally renowned brands such as LV, Prada, Gucci, Cartier, Chanel, Dior and Dolce Gabbana for 21 commodity categories, including perfumes, cosmetics, jewelry, watches, clothing, bags and cases, etc. With its opening, it will become a large theme duty free shopping mall that brings together the most international top brands and delivers the highest level services.
In the shopping mall, the first and second floors are dedicated for duty free goods and further divided into a franchise zone, a watch and jewelry zone, a perfumes and cosmetic zone, etc. which mainly deal in internationally well-known duty free commodities; the third floor is for duty paid shopping and catering and accommodates a great variety of duty-paid commodities, boutique restaurants, fast food, gourmet plaza and other zones.
Hainan Island offshore duty free policy has been in force for three years since its implementation, and great changes have taken place to the structure of consumption of tourists in Hainan, with the proportion of shopping expenditure soaring to 27.6% from the previous 13.8% and the number of shoppers increasing year by year. From April 20th, 2011 to May 31st, 2014, Sanya Duty Free Store had received 12.04 million customers, which means it received 10,700 customers on average every day. As a result of the limited 10,000 m2 of its business area, it has become a prominent problem that customers have to wait in queue in peak seasons of passenger flow. Compared with the Sanya Duty Free Store in the city center, Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall has expanded its business area by six times, solving the customer reception problem. It will bring customers with amazing shopping experience with richer commodity categories and a more comfortable shopping environment, and develop into a new landmark for tourism in Sanya.
Since the duty free store in the center of Sanya will stop its operation after opening of Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall, a station has been reserved for the shopping mall on the Haikou-Sanya high-speed rail, solving the transportation problem for the shopping center. To comprehensively serve consumers and facilitate customers’ travel and shopping, Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall plans to open free shuttles between the mall and Yalong Bay, Sanya Bay and Luhuitou.
As a leading enterprise in China’s duty free industry, CDFG has seized favorable industrial trends conditioned by steady development of China’s economy despite sluggish growth of the global duty free industry, to keep strengthening its operation strength and help shape the development pattern of travel retail market diversification, making CDFG stand out in the global duty free industry. Making use of opportunities that outbound travel of Chinese citizens and development of tourism in China have brought to China’s duty free industry and using the communication platform of BITE, CDFG has enabled more travel firms and tourists to understand CDFG and its Haitang Bay International Duty Free Shopping Mall project.
In future, CDFG will continue to create large retail platforms and improve its service quality, in order to improve the image of China’s duty free industry as a whole while leading sustained development of the industry.