Duty-free specialist: tourist spending soars

Chinese travellers nearly doubled their spending on tax-free goods in 2010 to 1.3 billion euros ($1.84 billion), tax-free transaction specialist Global Blue said Tuesday. The firm, owned by Barclays Private Equity and a leader in processing duty-free purchases, said in a statement that in the 12 months to March it handled 16.3 million traveller transactions, up 29 percent, and 5.7 million currency transactions, up 4.2 percent. Total transactions at 22 million were up 33 percent combined, it said. The company's turnover rose 40 percent to 325 million euros ($458 million). "International travellers and the amounts they are spending on destination shopping grew strongly, particularly amongst travellers from Brazil, China, Indonesia and Russia," the firm said. It did not specify the origin of the Chinese travellers. The company said that its data was based on claims for refunds of sales tax for goods being taken abroad. This was the first time that Chinese travellers led spending on tax-free goods, ahead of the Russians, Japanese, Americans and Indonesians, Global Blue said. It said France accounted for 19 percent of the total tax-free spending, followed by Britain and Italy each with 15 percent, Singapore 12 percent and Germany 12 percent.