Global Refund Index April results: US consumer spending on the bounce

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The table below shows travel shopping trends for the ten major nationalities in the countries of the Global Refund system-consisting of most EU countries, South Korea, Singapore and Argentina. Exclusive to travelretailworld.com.

Encouragingly, all major travel shopping nationalities continue to demonstrate spending growth well into double-digits compared to the same period in 2000. The only exceptions are the Japanese tourist market, which continues to show steady but sluggish spending growth of 4% in April compared to one year ago, and the Indonesian market which indicates a worsening situation.  Expenditure by Indonesians, traditionally big spenders in Singapore on toys and confectionery, is down over 30% on April 2000, and down 15% on the year to date.

The spending growth of US, Russian and Chinese tourists shows outstanding growth and only in the case of Chinese tourists did the ongoing trend show a slight decline with the monthly increase shifting from 74% to 50%. The positive significance of these nationalities cannot be overstated given the nature of all three outbound tourist markets, their popuation mass and future potential. Even US visitors continued to increase their spending overall in April, by 32% over April 2000--compared to 18% in March--although UK travel retailers continued to feel the negative effects of the foot-and-mouth scare. It is known that US visitor numbers to the UK remain sharply down, although other markets seem to have benefitted from a rebound in US consumer confidence resulting from five successive interest rate cuts.

Russian tourist spending experienced 37% growth--compared to 32% in March. Hong Kong, Polish, Swiss and Croatian nationals all increased their travel shopping expenditure at higher than the average rate. Hong Kong nationals rose to account for a 5% share of all sales in the tax refund system.

For more detailed statisics and information about the Global Refund tax reclaim service for retailers see the homepage feature 'Global Refund Index: 2000 report and analysis'.