SOUTH KOREA. Lotte Duty Free is celebrating the forthcoming Chuseok holiday season by offering a range of incentives for Korean shoppers heading abroad.
Chuseok is one of South Korea’s most poignant and popular holidays. The festival, which honours ancestors and deceased relatives, is held on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar on the full moon (or the fall equinox). This year’s dates are 3 to 6 October.
Travel retailers are mounting intensive efforts to increase spending by Koreans in the wake of a disastrous fall-off in Chinese tourism since the THAAD anti-missile system dispute with China began earlier this year (see tables below).
Lotte Duty Free’s Chuseok campaign runs from 1 September 1 to 12 October. All Korean shoppers will go into a draw for cash prizes totalling KRW30 million (US$27,000).
Customers spending over US$400 at any Lotte Duty Free downtown store in Seoul, Busan or Jeju will receive a limited-edition T-roaming card featuring Lotte models and faces, girl band Twice.
On 15 and 16 September, Lotte Duty Free Festival tickets will be presented on a first-come, first-served basis at the Jamsil Stadium. The hugely popular annual Lotte Duty Free Family Festival takes place this year on 15 October. The event highlight is a two-day K-Pop concert featuring a raft of popular names, including EXO, Twice, Huang Chi-yeul, NCT, Apink, Elris, Lee Seung-Chul and Guckkasten.
Lotte Duty Free is also preparing special gifts for soon-to-be married couples ahead of South Korea’s full-scale wedding season. From 1 September to 12 October the retailer will present five Simmons bed sets to qualifying wedding customers. Shoppers who have registered as wedding customers in offline stores will receive a VIP Gold Card discount of up to -15% for each brand. Those spending over US$1000 get an additional KRW50,000 (US$44) prepaid card.
At Incheon International Airport, Lotte Duty Free will offer a six-piece set of travel pouches for cosmetics and fragrance purchases over US$150. As part of the same campaign, the retailer will present KRW20,000 (US$18) discount coupons for redemption at the Lotte Duty Free Tokyo Ginza store in Tokyo.
A Lotte Duty Free marketing department spokesman said, “The Chuseok holiday season is expected to be a golden holiday for up to ten days, so we expect a lot of domestic customers to prepare for overseas travel. This year we have organised a particularly rich event for Chuseok.”
