16,000 duty-free items mailed to shoppers from Hainan

Staff members at China Post Group Haikou Branch pack up parcels of duty-free items purchased by tourists while they were in Hainan. [Photo/Hainan Daily]

Since the "mail and delivery" shopping service for Hainan offshore duty-free shopping was launched on Feb 3, a total of 16,246 items have been mailed from Hainan to recipients across China.

The novel shopping service, jointly introduced by the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs and the State Administration of Taxation, creates more convenience for shoppers, as they no longer need to pick up their goods at designated areas before departure.

Due to increased tourist flow during the Spring Festival and shopping promotions at duty-free shops, duty-free item mailing has been witnessing a significant increase and a strong growth momentum.

To date, the cities of Haikou, Sanya, and Qionghai have all carried out mailing services for duty-free shopping. The new shopping approach has been promoted particularly quickly in Sanya and Haikou, with 12,278 and 3,963 packages packed up and mailed out respectively in the two cities over the past month alone.

The Hainan postal administration department has been striving to promote this service among tourists, and provided various explanation and introduction sessions during the Spring Festival holiday. Moreover, it has worked hard to improve service quality, guide companies to make adequate preparations in terms of manpower, material resources, and transportation capacity, and open up a green channel for the delivery and processing of offshore duty-free items.