Where to Begin
Over the next five years, Hainan aims to not only make visiting tourists "enjoy shopping" but also allow local residents to "buy globally" from their doorstep. Zhang Chungen, Deputy Director of the Hainan Provincial Department of Commerce, stated on the 13th that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Hainan will build a duty-free shopping framework characterized by abundant goods, convenient shopping, and favorable prices, combining "offshore duty-free shopping with duty-free daily necessities for island residents," with the goal of becoming a "global duty-free shopping center."
The "15th Five-Year Plan" kick-off themed press conference focused on the "15th Five-Year Plan for Hainan International Tourism Consumption Center" was held in Haikou on the same day. Duty-free shopping is a "golden招牌" for Hainan. According to reports, over the past five years, Hainan has optimized its offshore duty-free shopping policies three times, increasing the number of duty-free retail outlets to 12. It has built the world's largest single duty-free store and cultivated a globally leading duty-free enterprise. In the past five years, the cumulative value of offshore duty-free shopping in Hainan reached 189.45 billion yuan.
Key Features of the New Plan
During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Hainan's duty-free landscape will further expand. Zhang Chungen said that Hainan will improve the planning and layout of offshore duty-free stores, promote differentiated operations, and actively introduce new brands. Simultaneously, it will gradually optimize the list of daily necessities for island residents, accelerate the opening of duty-free stores for daily necessities, and aim to cover all cities and counties as soon as possible. Specifically, regarding offshore duty-free shopping, Hainan will continuously enrich product categories, relax shopping restrictions, optimize planning and layout, and deeply promote differentiated operations to further enhance the international competitiveness of Hainan's offshore duty-free sector. For duty-free daily necessities for island residents, Hainan will gradually optimize the list of daily necessities, accelerate the layout of duty-free stores for daily necessities, and strive to achieve full coverage across all cities and counties in the province within the year, allowing local residents to purchase duty-free goods conveniently.
In terms of expanding the international consumer brand supply chain, Zhang Chungen indicated that Hainan will attract first-line brands and the first store launches, invite international high-end brand duty-free operations and distribution centers, build a global hub for duty-free brand aggregation, and support national trend brands and high-quality Hainan specialty products entering duty-free sales channels. At the same time, it will implement the "duty-free+" strategy, promoting deep linkages between duty-free shopping and industries such as medical health, education, and cultural sports tourism, expanding new consumption scenarios.
Service improvement is also a key focus. Zhang Chungen said that Hainan will optimize the entire duty-free shopping process experience, focusing on the duty-free shopping needs of overseas personnel, improving multilingual signage, foreign card acceptance, mobile payments, and other payment facilitation measures, enhancing the shopping experience for overseas tourists, and helping to boost the "China Travel" and "China Shopping" trends. Zhang Chungen stated that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Hainan will adopt a more open attitude and more pragmatic measures to continuously release the dividends of the offshore duty-free policy, fully promoting the improvement and upgrade of the industry's capability.