SOUTH KOREA. Lotte Duty Free Shop has extended its duty free shopping offer and related benefits on non-landing tourism flights (so-called ‘flights to nowhere’), which have been increasing in frequency since being introduced last December.
A non-landing tourist flight passes through foreign airspace without landing and returns to the departure airport. Since the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport issued international tourism flight permits last December, the concept has proven popular with travel-starved Koreans.
The number of approved flights was expanded from 11 in December to 17 in January, and is being increased sharply this month due to the Lunar New Year holidays. Duty free sales in January through such flights were up by around +70% month-on-month.
In line with the increasing demand, Lotte Duty Free has provided various duty free shopping benefits with domestic airlines such as Air Busan, T-Way, Jeju Air, and Air Seoul – the biggest number of partner airlines that any Korean travel retailer enjoys.
Customers using non-landing tourism flights affiliated with Lotte Duty Free can receive up to KW600,000 (US$535) of LDF PAY (the Lotte Duty Free loyalty scheme) value and up to -60% discounts on popular fashion and beauty brands such as Tumi, Camper and Hula.
Lotte Duty Free is providing differentiated benefits to customers through an exclusive partnership with Air Busan, which is operating six non-landing flights this month, including one on 13 February for the Lunar New Year holiday. Passengers get a range of buying incentives when purchasing from Lotte Duty Free’s online store while a Lotte Beauty kit comprising a range of care products and an Atelier Cologne fragrance will be featured.
Lotte Duty Free said that the volume of duty free purchases by non-landing tourist flight passengers was 2.5 times higher than that of Korean airline passengers before the pandemic.
“In the current situation where the domestic duty free industry has no choice but to rely on sales of daigou in China, non-landing flights along with duty free sales through domestic channels is an important way to generate sales to Koreans,” the company said.
