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Tag: Spring Festival

  • Chinese spend $13.8bn abroad during Spring Festival

    Chinese spend $13.8bn abroad during Spring Festival

    During the Chinese Spring Festival, 6 million Chinese travelled overseas and spent a total of 90 billion ($13.8 billion) yuan on shopping.

    The products they purchased abroad included expensive luxury items, smart bidets, and electric rice cookers, but surprisingly, most Chinese tourists bought items used in everyday life such as cough syrup, sanitary napkins, condoms, stockings, electric toothbrushes, and nail clippers.

    Chinese media also reported on the phenomenon of their people buying commonplace items during their travels abroad. Various media outlets reported that Chinese tourists bought condoms, sanitary napkins, nail clippers, tumblers, and cough syrup from Japan, and hair dye, shampoo, sanitary napkins with oriental medicinal herbs, ramen, and honey butter almonds from Korea.

    Cosmetics, health supplements and clothing were popular items from the US, as well as fountain pens, knives, key chains and electric toothbrushes from Europe.

    A clerk at a duty-free store in Osaka commented that sales were 2.6 times higher than in 2015, thanks to the spirited purchasing of low-priced, everyday items by Chinese tourists.

    A tour guide in Seoul commented that along with cosmetics, skincare products, and shampoo, snacks and stationary were popular Korean items among Chinese tourists.

    Some Chinese media outlets suggested that because overseas products are of better quality, can be purchased at more reasonable prices, and are safer than Chinese products, Chinese tourists stock up on foreign products when they have a chance.

    A Chinese consumer commented that she comes to Korea every year to buy facial packs and BB creams.

    “Of course, there are quality packs in China too, but so many are fake, and sometimes side effects occur even if the products are purchased at official stores.”

    Officials at Chinese consumer associations point out that China still lags behind neighboring countries in the manufacturing, design, and development of products, and should overcome the fact that the quality of their products is low in comparison to prices.

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  • Spring Festival retail gloom

    Spring Festival retail gloom

    Fortune seems to have favoured Macau over Hong Kong during last week’s Spring Festival.

    But both territories suffered from the ongoing change in Mainland Chinese travel habits.

    Data from the Macau Government Tourism Office showed 548,536 tourists arrived in Macau between February 7 and 10 – which equates to a 5.2 per cent increase over last year’s holiday season. Some 70 per cent of them came from Mainland China.

    However, anecdotal reports from Macau shopkeepers say the increased visitor numbers during the Spring Festival retail break did not translate into higher spending in stores.

    According to the Macau Daily Times “a majority” of retailers it spoke to reported “a drastic drop in business” from mainland visitors.

    One – a fireworks vendor – reported a 50 per cent decline in sales, and other retailers selling apparel and beauty products also reported a decline.

    One cosmetics retailer said sales rose 10 per cent, and snack food stores reported trading was on a par with last year.

    In Hong Kong, where retail sales estimates have yet to be reported, the number of Mainland Chinese visitors fell by about 10 per cent – and the number of groups by an alarming 70 per cent, to about 120 groups per day. So clearly, there will have been a negative impact on retail sales for the week.

    Shopkeepers in Mong Kok, where a violent riot erupted on Monday, reported far fewer tourists in the area.

    “From Monday till now, no one would like to come to this area,” one retailer told local news media.

    “There are more police than tourists. My business is not even half as good as last year, what can I do? What should I do after the holiday?”

    But on the mainland, Ministry of Commerce data shows retail sales rose 11.2 per cent during the Lunar New Year ‘Golden Week’ from February 7 to 13. According to the data, sales by retailers and catering firms grew to about 754 billion yuan, or US$114.879 billion.