Chinese tourists set to boost retail

The nation’s retail and casino shares are expected to gather ground this year due to a surge in the number of Chinese tourists who spend big on shopping, analysts said Wednesday.

A total of 219,400 Chinese tourists visited South Korea in February, up a whopping 65 percent from the same month a year earlier, according to data by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), South Korea’s state-run tourism agency.

In the first two months of the year, the number of Chinese tourists jumped 41 percent on-year to 375,100 due to the anti-Japanese sentiment of the Chinese public sparked by the dispute over islands in the East China Sea and the Chinese week-long holiday last month, analysts said. (Yonhap)

In contrast, the number of Japanese tourists to Seoul tumbled this year due to the Japanese yen’s sharp depreciation against the local currency and the risk of North Korean provocations raised by the belligerent nation’s third nuclear test in mid-February, they said.

Between January and February, the number of Japanese tourists fell 20 percent to 407,600 from 517,600 a year earlier.

Analysts said retailers rather than hotels will benefit from the rise in the number of Chinese tourists.

"While Japanese tourists stay at luxury hotels and spend less on shopping, Chinese visitors tend to spend a lot of money on shopping," Park Seok-joong, an analyst at High Investment &Securities Co.

Shares of department stores, discounters, duty free shops and cosmetic manufacturers are likely to get a boost from the rise in the number of Chinese visitors this year, Park said, adding that casino shares will also be among the gainers as an increasing number of high-income Chinese nationals visit South Korea.

Shares of Grand Korea Leisure Co., a local casino operator, closed at 31,450 won (US$28) on Tuesday, up 7.5 percent from the year’s first trading session. The shares of another casino operator, Paradise Co., shot up 16.9 percent during the same period.