Global Refund Index February: some positive trends for all nationalities

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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.

The February trends show that the positive growth of travel shopping by almost all nationalities (and in particular US, Korean and Russian tourists) continues. Only visitors from Switzerland and Indonesia have showed signs of a decrease at the start of the year. The accumulative totals show that spending has increased most rapidly in the case of visitors from Croatia (+72%), Russia (+44%), mainland China (+41%) and the US (+25%) compared to the same two-month period last year.

Since this series began with the first monthly snapshot last October, spending by Japanese travellers has been increasing steadily and the Japanese share of all sales in store (SIS) under the tax refund system actually increased from 19% to 20%. Spending by US visitors has increased but has been more volatile and declined in share from 14% to 11%. The foot-and-mouth scare and economic worries are expected to have an impact on US tourism to the UK and to Europe. However there has been no appearance of this yet in the figures and US spending continued to rise in January and February.

Spending by Asian visitors has accelerated its recovery at the beginning of the year, particularly from South Korea, Hong Kong and mainland China. These nationalities have increased their spending by 46%, 25% and 46% respectively in February compared to the same period in 2000. As a result visitors from Turkey and Poland have been replaced in the rankings.

For more information about the Global Refund tax reclaim service for retailers and the methodology of the GR Index see the feature Global Index 2000 Report.