Retailers hopeful as Hong Kong waits for New Year rush
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Your support makes all the difference.Retailers in the city of Hong Kong -- so famous for its shopping options -- are preparing for what they hope to be a bumper Chinese New Year period, fuelled by an influx of around 550,000 tourists from mainland China.
Retailers in the city of Hong Kong - so famous for its shopping options - are preparing for what they hope to be a bumper Chinese New Year period, fuelled by an influx of around 550,000 tourists from mainland China.
And they have plenty of other reasons to be smiling too.
That the retail industry here is back on its feet after the trials afflicting the world over the past 12 months has been highlighted recently by the fact British fashion retailer Accessorize's was willing to fork out HK$310,000 (29,000 euros) a month for a 500 square foot shop in the high-end International Finance Centre's shopping mall, which sits right beside the city's stock exchange.
It's a record for the mall, considered among the city's finest and one that turned over HK$6 billion (560,000,000 euros) alone last year - a rise over 12 months of 25 percent.
Retail rents in Hong Kong are generally considered an indicator of how well the local economy is doing and so these figures are impressive given the woes the rest of the world has been going through.
In December, meanwhile, a jewelry shop in the harbor-side Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district sold for a Hong Kong record HK$695,544 (65,000 euros) per square foot - or HK$843 million (79,000,000 euros) for its 1,212 sq ft space.
Mainland Chinese tourists will be most welcomed in the city's Causeway Bay shopping district over the four-day New Year holiday period, which begins on Saturday.
Rents there overall dropped 15 percent last year - an indication that retailers were moving out due to lack of sales action.
But it's hard to feel too sorry for Hong Kong's landlords. Rents may indeed have dropped in Causeway Bay, but it is still the second most expensive shopping district in the world, rent wise.
According to property adviser Cushman & Wakefield (www.cushwake.be ), Causeway Bay ranks behind New York's Fifth Avenue and in front of Paris's Champs Elysées in terms of rent.
C&W - which measures shops in terms of square meters - keeps an eye on happenings from 274 locations across 60 countries for its annual "Main Streets Across the World'' report, which was first published in 1986 and is considered the best guide to how the globe's retail sector is faring. It is published each September.
The world's retail rental hotspots*:
1. Fifth Avenue (New York): 1,086 euros (per meter squared per month gross)
2. Causeway Bay (Hong Kong): 974 euros
3. Champs Elysées (Paris): 644 euros
4. Via Montenapoleone (Milan) 567 euros
5. Tokyo's Ginza district (Tokyo): 496 euros
* figures from the 2009 "Main Streets Across the World" report, published by Cushman & Wakefield
MS
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