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.