Duty Free Group enters Cambodia

China Duty Free Group Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China International Travel Service Group Co Ltd, will open its first foreign duty-free shop in December, the group said on Monday.

The shop in Siem Reap, Cambodia will be the first non-airport duty-free shop in that country.

It will be near the famed Angkor Wat Temple. The group received a business license for the shop in August.

The shop, which covers 4,500 square meters, is still under construction and preparing for next month's opening, the company said in a statement.

The company will open another duty-free shop in Phnom Penh next year, it said. It will cooperate with Nagacorp Ltd, a local hotel company in Cambodia, to operate that shop, to be located at Naga World, a Nagacorp mall that gets about 2.5 million visitors annually.

The two shops will provide an array of perfume, watches, tobacco, wine and other products. Chinese outbound travelers are the major target consumers of the shops.

Last year, 470,000 Chinese residents visited the country, up 38 percent year-on-year, according to Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism.

Minister of Tourism Thong Khon has forecast that the country will attract 800,000 Chinese travelers by 2015.

China's duty-free industry has found its way into foreign markets, aiming to provide Chinese travelers with a good shopping experience in addition to a quality travel experience, Hu Zhimin, vice-president of CITS, said at the China International Travel Mart in Shanghai, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Dai Bin, director of the China Tourism Academy, said the opening of the China Duty Free Group shops in Cambodia represents an important step by the group in exploring overseas opportunities and the projects will promote the group's globalization.

China Duty Free Group has also signed an agreement with Nagacorp to cooperate in duty-free projects in third countries including Japan, South Korea, Mongolia and Russia.

Duty-free business has become a significant business for CITS. In the first half of this year, income from duty-free sales was 3.45 billion yuan ($562 million), up 10.9 percent year-on-year, according to the group's financial report.