Duty free and travel retailers will see some changes to travel patterns from the Chinese this summer compared to summer 2015 – and they may also be surprised at some of the airports and/or city-pairs that have crept up the table [shown is the top 20 pairings only].

The key winners look to be Tokyo Haneda in Japan and Seoul Incheon in South Korea and Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi in Thailand.

The data were sourced exclusively by TRBusiness from aviation analyst OAG [based on seat capacities for IATA summer scheduled flights] and show that Hong Kong remains the dominant airport for Chinese travellers from both Shanghai Pudong (PVG) and Beijing (PEK). These two city pairs will each have capacity for over one million pax.

However, in both cases, growth since last summer will be a fairly lacklustre +4%. Much of that traffic is transferring through HKG to other destinations worldwide, rather than accessing the downtown duty free market.

Capacity between Incheon (ICN) and PVG is set to boom by +15% this summer to over 761,000 while the pairing of ICN and Qingdao Liuting International in Shandong province [perhaps not so familiar to many DF&TR players] should rise to seventh place with over 618,000 pax capacity due to growth of +18%. ICN is also set to benefit from high growth of +18% to PEK.

HANEDA SCORES

From the point of view of the best growth rates, Tokyo’s Haneda (HND) is the outright winner with astonishing rises to PVG and PEK of +1,574% and +103% respectively.

OAG is careful to quality these, saying: “There are some very large year-on-year percentage growths at Haneda that reflect the opening of the airport for more direct Chinese services. Many of these services were previously operated to Narita (NRT).”

 

In fact NRT has suffered from this market change. Its seat capacity to PVG will fall by -3% this summer [the only airport in the top 20 to see a Chinese contraction in the season] but it still retains fourth place for overall capacity.

Other notable gainers of Chinese capacity this summer should be Los Angeles International (+33%) to over 300,000 and Bangkok International (BKK) which will see uplifts of +31% and +20% from PEK and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (CAN) respectively.

In Europe, only Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) makes the top 20 in terms of absolute seat capacities; it is in 19^th place as Frankfurt has dropped out (to 21^st).  From a growth perspective, CDG has made the top 20 thanks to a +10% rise in capacity to PVG.