March Duty-Free Store Visitors Down 66.5% from Previous Month... Decline Widens

On the 9th, the departure hall of Terminal 1 at Incheon International Airport is quiet due to the impact of COVID-19. Photo by Mun Ho-nam munonam@

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] The shadow of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) that has struck the duty-free industry deepened further in March.

According to the Korea Duty Free Shop Association on the 28th, the number of visitors to domestic duty-free shops in March was recorded at 587,879, a 66.5% decrease compared to 1,754,175 in the previous month. The rate of decline compared to the previous month also increased from 54.3% to 66.5%.

During this period, the number of domestic and foreign visitors were 325,736 and 262,143 respectively, down 68.8% and 63.1% compared to the previous month.

Total sales in March were about 1.0873 trillion won, slightly down by about 1.4% from 1.1026 trillion won in the previous month, maintaining a similar level. This is because sales had already halved in February compared to January, and some daigong (Chinese traders) had resumed commercial activities.

Recovery of the duty-free industry after the COVID-19 crisis is expected to be difficult. Currently, the average daily number of passengers at Incheon International Airport is about 2,000, a sharp drop from the usual 200,000. Incheon International Airport Corporation forecasts that the number of passengers using Incheon Airport this year will be 14.26 million, a 79.8% decrease from 71.16 million last year. The number of flight operations is also expected to decrease by 74.6% to 92,000 flights.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.