Lotte Duty Free loses Jakarta airport concession

Lotte Duty Free has pulled out of an airport in Jakarta after an unsuccessful bid to extend the contract.

Opened in January 2012, the Korean company’s duty-free store in Jakarta International Airport was its first overseas outlet.

“We took part in the tender after our contract expired, but a local company won the bid,” says a Lotte official. “We will focus on our other foreign stores, including the one in downtown Jakarta, and continue to push for overseas expansion.”

Lotte has six duty-free stores abroad, in Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Meanwhile, South Korean duty-free retailers are taking the brunt of a steep drop in tourist numbers after Beijing banned China’s travel agencies from selling Korea-bound package tours, says Yonhap News Agency. This started in March in apparent retaliation over the deployment of a US missile defence system in South Korea.

The number of Chinese tourists in South Korea more than halved last month, marking a decline for four straight months.

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