Surge in Chinese tourist arrivals continues to boost South Korean duty free

Chinese visitor numbers to South Korea in August climbed by +70.2% year-on-year to 873,771, according to the Korea Tourism Organization. The figures are distorted by the 2015 MERS health crisis which ravaged inbound tourism in 2015, prompting a -32.3% year-on-year fall in arrivals last August. A better base comparison is the +15.2% growth in August 2016 over the same month in 2014, when Chinese arrivals reached 757,683.

Chinese visitors are critical to South Korea’s travel retail sector (the world’s largest), representing 52.5% of total arrivals in the month.

For the first eight months of 2016 Chinese arrivals rose by +48.8% year-on-year to 5,608,046.

The importance of group tourists to the travel retail channel is underlined by the breakdown of Chinese visitor numbers (see table below) with 4,839,309 group travellers arriving in South Korea over the first eight months. Group tourists accounted for 86% of Chinese arrivals. Others (principally free independent travellers) represented just 731,731 arrivals, a 13% share, with business travellers and officials making up the balance.

Attracting the FIT market is an increasingly important battleground in the fight between retailers to attract big-name luxury brands.

However, arrivals by ‘others’ fell -7.0% year-on-year in the first eight months, while Chinese group tourist numbers surged +64.1%.

Japanese arrivals grew -51.7% to 225,456 in August, a 14% share.

The first eight months of 2016 saw a +23.5% rise in Japanese visitor numbers to 1,451,565, a 12.6% share.

Korean departures increased by +12.5% in August to 2,064,241; and for the first eight months by +16.8% to 14,780,387.