SHOPPERS visiting China’s island province of Hainan spent a record 2.49 billion yuan (US$346.2 million) on duty-free goods over the eight-day Lunar New Year holiday, data from Haikou Customs showed.

That represents a year-on-year rise of 60%, with the number of shoppers from Feb. 10-17 reaching more than 297,000, each spending an average of 8,358 yuan on duty-free goods.

Since 2020, when China tripled duty-free purchase limits in the 12 duty-free malls in Hainan to 100,000 yuan, overall duty-free spending has also tripled from about US$2 billion in 2019 to more than US$6.1 billion in 2023. That growth is expected to continue as the entire island is set to become duty-free in 2025.

Even a year after Chinese borders re-opened, the lure of duty-free shopping in Hainan, an island about the size of Belgium, remains strong as flight restrictions, visa delays and the high cost of travel to far-flung international destinations have kept many Chinese travelers.

Spending in Hainan was a notable bright spot for tourism spending over the Lunar New Year holiday, with domestic tourists overall still spending less per trip than they did in 2019, despite a boom in trips this year after an enormous wave of COVID infections impeded last year’s holiday period.

Overall domestic tourism spending jumped by 47.3% to 632.7 billion yuan from the same holiday period in 2023, according to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released Sunday.

The number of domestic trips made during this year’s holiday grew by 34.3% from a year ago, totaling 474 million. Almost 100 million passengers made trips using China’s railways over the holiday, and 18 million passengers flew during the period, according to official data.

Though the ministry did not break down tourism spending per trip, according to calculations based on ministry data, average spending during the holiday this year was 1,335 yuan per trip, which remains 9.5% lower than 1,475 yuan per trip in 2019. (SD-Agencies)