Over the seven-day Chinese New Year public holiday period, which ran February 11 to 17, duty free stores on Hainan Island saw sales exceed 1.5 billion yuan ($231.2 million), according to data from the Hainan Provincial Department of Commerce. This is double the amount recorded in the same period for 2019 (prior to China’s 2020 outbreak of Covid-19 which impacted travel and spending over that Spring Festival holiday).

Despite authorities also discouraging wide-spread travel over this holiday period, more than 200,000 shoppers visited Hainan’s duty free stores, which have risen in number from four to nine outlets in recent months - a sign of the investment that is currently being poured into the sector from retailers and developers keen to gain a slice of Hainan’s growing duty free retail pie.

Cosmetics and perfumes were the top two most popular categories with Spring Festival shoppers and many outlets offered vouchers and significant discounts in order to encourage purchasing, some categories, such as watches and jewellery, saw discounts of up to 25 percent.