SOUTH KOREA. Lotte Duty Free has introduced a duo of digital mobile Lunar New Year greeting cards designed to reduce the wastage from traditional paper cards.
The country’s leading travel retailer launched the ‘mobile card’ concept in December in time for the 2022 New Year and Lunar New Year holidays.
Lotte Duty Free offers two versions. One allows customers to write a customised message embracing the concept of travel. The second is a video card delivered with the message ‘Dear my beloved one’ featuring an image of BTS, the superstar Korean boy band who act as Lotte Duty Free models.
The cards can be used for free on Lotte Duty Free’s official SNS accounts such as Instagram and Facebook.
Lotte Duty Free’s mobile card service has been used by nearly 100,000 customers since its launch, surpassing 320,000 views. The cards have been deployed in multiple countries including Japan, the US, China, Indonesia, with an impressively high 85% of users being from overseas. 
Lotte Duty Free mobile cards can be used until 1 February by customers in South Korea and abroad to send regards to those who are difficult to meet due to pandemic-driven travel restrictions. Messages can be sent by text, KakaoTalk or other social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
Lotte Duty Free said that it has been expanding its communication with foreign customers while improving its digital shopping environment. This programme included the opening of the world’s first online duty free luxury store, Sogong 1St Avenue, and an improvement to the retailer’s mainstream online shopping platform.
LDF Magazine, which now has 3.2 million global customers, has been expanded to six languages since last year. The company noted that it been producing regular interesting content for the 80-90% of its Instagram and YouTube channel subscribers who are overseas-based and weary of the pandemic.
Lotte Duty Free Head of Marketing Lee Sang-jin said, “We hope that customers will be happy to say hello to their family and friends with the mobile card prepared by Lotte DutyFree. We will continue to communicate with global customers through various digital channels and increase our status as Korea’s leading duty free retailer.”
