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Seoul tops airport retail rankings

By Mei Ling Tan
1 min read
Seoul tops airport retail rankings
Seoul tops airport retail rankings

Seoul’s Incheon Airport not only tops the Asia-Pacific rankings for retail spending – it has the highest turnover of any airport in the world.

Which is remarkable given it ranks 10th in the region by passenger numbers, according to Airports Council International data, with 49,281,220 people passing through in 2015, compared to more than 90 million in Beijing and 55 million in Singapore.

Asian airports dominate the world top 100 airport retail rankings measuring shopper spending, according to data collected by Swedish company Generation Research for 2015. While the tables lists the world’s top 100 and Asia-Pacific’s top 50, it does not provide any actual figures for spending. Sales from around the world were converted into US dollar value.

In the global airport retail rankings, Incheon leads Dubai Airport, with Singapore Changi third.

In the Asia rankings, published below, Singapore leads Bangkok – something of a surprise third-place getter given it is generally regarded as an expensive airport for ‘duty-free’ goods, and Pudong, Shanghai in fourth. Hong Kong makes it only fifth on the table, despite its huge passenger throughput and broad retail offer.

Tokyo Narita, Beijing Capital, Taipei Taoyuan, Cheju and Osaka Kansai complete the top 10.

On the global rankings, those Asian airports take fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, 10th, 12th and 14th places.

London Heathrow takes fourth place, Paris de Gaulle ninth, and Frankfurt 13th.

Asia’s Top 50 list:

Seoul tops airport retail rankings

The Global Top 100 list:

Seoul tops airport retail rankings

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