Performances of Duty-free Shops
The Korea Customs Service announced on October 20 that the 50 duty-free shops located in South Korea posted 8.9331 trillion won in sales for the first three quarters of this year. The amount is 36.4% larger than that of the same period of last year, when the total annual sales reached an all-time high of 9.1984 trillion won.
The 22 downtown duty-free shops located in Seoul, Jeju, Busan and so on accounted for 71.8% of the sales. Their sales increased by 49.1% from a year ago. Those at airports and ports took up 23.2% and the rest accounted for 5%. Imported products and the others represented 59.5% and 40.5% of the sales, respectively.
57.2% (20.92 million) of the duty-free shop customers were South Koreans and foreigners accounted for 42.8% (15.67 million). The average amount of purchase was US$350 in the case of foreigners and US$106 when it comes to the others.
Five new duty-free shops opened in Seoul between December last year and May this year. Their sales for the first nine months of 2016 added up to 614.2 billion won, equivalent to 12% of the sales of those in Seoul.