It is fairly difficult to break the records you set again and again even for the champions in the Olympic Games where first-class masters compete for the medals. However in the recent golden week during the spring festival of the year of the snake, this is happened to the travel market of Hainan. The outstanding team which constantly set, broke and updated the records is the Sanya duty free store of CDF.
For both Hainan and Sanya, the spring festival of 2013 is an important period. Despite the ever gorgeous scenery and climate of Hainan during the spring festival, many people silently observe the market. They intend to observe and know about the overall performances of the Sanya travel market during the spring festival. Following the implementation of the off-island duty free policy, the “prize control order” was carried out by the government. Not long before the spring festival, the NPC and CPPCC of Hainan were successfully held, during which many local policies were put forward to elevate the overall service level of Hainan’s travel market and fully consolidate the details of the International Travel Island Construction Project. The spring festival of the year of snake in Hainan started with multi-dimensional and well-organized preparation.
“This spring festival nearly drives every tourist around Hainan crazy”, said a tourist interviewed by the Sanya duty free store on 14th February, “I’ve talked about this with every friend and relative.” “This” here means his duty free shopping experience in Sanya. During the spring festival, the opening hours of the Sanya duty free store of CDF are prolonged from 22:00 to 24:00. Besides, various forms of promotion covering shopping for free, hong bao (traditional Chinese gift, a red envelope containing small amounts of money), lucky draws and in-store rebates, which triggers a spring festival shopping carnival in Sanya. The fifth day of the Chinese lunar new year even saw the grand launch of the Valentine’s Day Promotion. On the fourth and fifth day of the Chinese lunar new year, the stored was kept open for 39 hours in order to have multiform promotions and provide high discounts for various brands during assorted periods for couples and ordinary consumers. This brings the consumers a brand new shopping experience and injects some romance to the travel experience during the spring festival as well.
It is not hard to imagine the benefits that a carnival atmosphere like this would bring to the market in improving its efficiency and promoting its sales. However, the excellent performance of the Sanya duty free store still reached beyond the expectations of the experts. Not long before the spring festival, an industry source said that Hainan’s travel market would be highly productive. He even made an expectation that the Sanya duty free store “is likely to break the record of the last year and set a new one of 15 or even 20 million.”
In fact, the performance of the Sanya duty free store is much better than the industry source expected. The new data that the reporter obtained for the Sanya duty free store showed that the sales turnover from the first to the sixth of the Chinese lunar new year was more than 130 million yuan with a daily turnover of 21.855 million yuan. The accumulative number of visitors was over 126,000 and that of a day on average was over 20,000. The popularity of the Sanya duty free shop is strong evidence for its excellent sales performances. On the second and third day of the lunar new year, the daily proceeds reached 20,180,000 yuan, which is a huge breakthrough compared with the 12,900,000 yuan of the same period last year. It was also the first time for the store to have a daily revenue of over 20,000,000 yuan. In the following days of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth of the lunar new year, the daily revenues respectively were 22,570,000 yuan, 22,810,000 yuan, 28,980,000 yuan and 21,920,000 yuan, all of which are more than 20,000,000 yuan. Among these days, the fifth day, which was the 14th February, saw a revenue of over 28,980,000 yuan during the 39-hour Valentine’s Day promotion theme. That was nearly 30,000,000 yuan, which is 2.3 times the highest record of 12,900,000 yuan from the same period last year, updating again the daily revenue record since the opening of the duty free store and setting a new milestone.
The sequence of breakthroughs is created by a series of advantageous factors. The spring festival of the year of snake was the first golden week since the implementation of off-island duty free policy last November. The tourists were moved by the sincerity of Hainan and the off-island duty free policy attracted many tourists. The large number of visitors and the secondary influence of the policy helped the Sanya duty free store with its leapfrog development. Knowing that the duty free limit was upgraded to 8000 yuan, many tourists started to make travel plans to Sanya. As the landmark and tourist spot of Hainan, Sanya duty free store highlighted duty free shopping in Hainan and even around the country through its continuous high numbers of sales.
The encouragement of the off-island duty free policy and the gradual elevation of Hainan’s service level in the travel industry enhanced the overall development of the Sanya duty free store. The additional 3000 square meters of sales premises before the spring festival came into operation on the first day of the lunar new year. In this premises, the section for food and toys was improved into sections of high-end gift brands, brands for children, etc. The all-round shopping experience, with or without tax, received positive remarks from the consumers. Under the instruction of the guides, many tourist groups carried out their shopping plans in an orderly way. Almost all members bought something. Many other tourists came particularly for the store. Some even called their friends and relatives from faraway for their advice as they could not decide what to choose among the various products. Perfumes and cosmetics have always been the most visited category. More choices were provided during the golden week due to the recent introduction of brand names such as Benefit, Shuuemura, Givenchy, Coach, Ralph Lauren and Ernest Borel. The promotions in the Sanya duty free shop would also still be on for a while after the golden week of the spring festival. A good amount of tourists still plan to shop there just before leaving Hainan.
Not only is Sanya a place with fantastic natural scenery and a fantastic travel environment, it is also the location of the Sanya duty free store which is the fourth inner city duty free store around the world and the first in China. The store offers the consumers a wide range of duty free products and forms a diversified travel shopping attraction for tourists both at home and abroad, increasing the overall shopping volume of tourists from all places in Hainan. This also enriches the implications for the travel market of Hainan and improves the brand image of tourism in Hainan. Experts have pointed out that duty free shopping had a more obvious influence on tourism during the spring festival of the year of snake and duty free shopping might be a new growth point for holiday tourism in the future.
The excellent market performance of the Sanya duty free store which has continuously set new records and has not only set off the travel market of Hainan during the spring festival but also fully proved the success of the off-island duty free policy and verified the effectiveness of the measures of the Hainan government in elevating the service level of the travel market. This provided a perfect ending for the golden week of Hainan’s travel market during the spring festival.