Southern Airports Services Co Ltd (SASCO) has opened a mixed brand fashion watch and sunglasses boutique in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport International Terminal (T2) replacing the luxury watches boutique that previously occupied the outlet location.

The new store, which opened on 13 July in the central area of T2’s departure concourse, houses more than 20 watch and sunglasses brands and features a new shop-front design that is expected to be adopted by SASCO’s other T2 duty free outlets in future.

Positioned opposite SASCO’s large perfume and cosmetics shop, the new boutique displays fashion watch brands including Emporio Armani, Coach, Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs, Folli Follie, Adidas, Ice, Anne Klein, Fossil and Diesel, plus a selection of Lego watches.

Sunglasses brands on display include Prada, Rayban, Oakley, Police, Michael Kors, Emporio Armani, Bolon, Calvin Klein and Christian Dior.

“The new shop now has many popular brands,” said a source at Tan Son Nhat Airport. “Before there were some famous watch brands, mostly luxury watches. It’s the newest shop here; it opened last week.”

SASCO operates more than 12 duty free shops and boutiques in Ton San Nhat T2, which handles international flights while domestic flights operate from Domestic Terminal 1.

T2 opened in September 2007 and has a total capacity of 12 million international passengers a year, according to Airports Corporation of Vietnam, while upgrading work in T1 is designed to almost double the domestic terminal’s capacity to 15 million passengers yearly from 8 million previously.

The state-run company’s various duty free outlets include a Swatch shop along with individual boutiques selling Coach, Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry, Montblanc, Swarovski and Tumi.

In addition to the large perfume and cosmetics shop, SASCO also operates three liquor, tobacco and confectionery shops, and a souvenir and confectionery shop, in T2’s airside departure concourse.

“Chinese and South Korea passengers are big customers, but it depends on the flights,” the source said. “Some days there are flights to Russia and they buy a lot. There are night-time flights to Japan and they buy as well. Russians buy liquor and other items. Chinese passengers buy fashion brands.”

In addition to opening its new fashion watches and sunglasses boutique, SASCO has introduced several new brands in its other shops recently.

Michael Kors is the latest addition in the perfume and cosmetics shop, following the successful launch of La Mer several months ago, which is prominently positioned at the front left of the shop.

SASCO is targeting foreign passengers in its departure shops with signs informing Japanese and other nationalities of price comparisons with domestic duty paid prices in Japan and some other countries.

“It’s mostly foreign passengers buying in the departure shops, but in summer we have some Vietnamese customers buying here,” the source said.

Elsewhere, signs in SASCO’s duty free arrival shops advertise duty free arrival prices as being up to 30% cheaper than duty paid domestic retail prices in Vietnam.

SASCO operates three duty free arrival shops selling liquor, tobacco, confectionery and other goods. Arrival duty free shopping was relaunched in Tan Son Nhat Airport in January 2014 after the government previously suspended it in July 2009.

Two arrival shops opened in January 2014, occupying 51sq m and 63sq m, are located on either side of the arrival baggage hall. A third duty free arrival shop, opened in mid-2014 and open to passenger access on all four sides, is situated in the centre of the arrival baggage hall.

The current duty free import limit is understood to be 400 cigarettes and 1.5 litres of alcoholic beverages containing 22% alcohol or more by volume, or 2 litres of beverages containing less than 22%.

In addition, passengers can buy other goods in the arrival shops to a maximum value of VND 5m (US$238) for duty free import while taxes are payable on purchases exceeding this limit.

Tan Son Nhat is Vietnam’s largest airport and according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, some 9.1m international passengers used Tan Son Nhat in 2014, representing a 1% increase compared with the previous year.

The total number of international and domestic passengers rose 10.5% to reach 22.1m in 2014, driven by a growth in domestic air travel.

Most international flights from Tan Son Nhat are to other cities in Asia where Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are the leading destinations followed by Siem Reap, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul and Guangzhou.

In addition to other cities in Asia, a smaller number of international flights serve destinations in Australia, the Middle East and Europe.

Meanwhile, the Vietnamese government’s newly launched visa free tourist entry scheme is aimed at boosting visitor numbers from five European countries as the trial scheme gets underway.

From 1 July to the end of 2016 travellers from UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain can stay up to 15 days, visa free, according to Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).

The government expects visitor numbers from the five countries to grow by 50% over the next three years, according to VNAT Director, Nguyen Van Tuan. In 2014 some 635,000 travellers from the five countries visited Vietnam accounting for most of the 700,000 total visitor numbers from Western Europe.

In a bid to boost tourism Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism is expected to propose extending the visa free scheme to other potential markets including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India.