Michelle, given the spending patterns that we've seen in trying now, what are
you expecting to outperform during this holiday season?
Yeah, definitely. If we look at that, they'd have across
the board. Tourist data is quite encouraging.
Looking at the visitation numbers, it's growing by 70 percent year on year and
it's back to the 120 percent higher than pre Kobe level.
And also something more encouraging is for the tourism revenue for the very
first time past the pandemic impact. Back to the twenty level.
And on the flip side, we also see the overall retail sales are decent.
Having a 19 percent young yo girls, we believe these sound track of the over
recovery. When we talk about Chinese consumers, we
know their love for luxury goods. Are we seeing that pop higher after the
pandemic? Yeah, so I think overall we in D.C.,
these are Paul Allen trends in the Chinese consumption market.
So Top End consumers are the spending power is relatively resilient.
So the spending has been pretty solid and the debate right now is whether the
ISE spending at home or the spending abroad.
But our view is that we are seeing both the domestic and also the overall
Chinese cohort spent spending on globally.
We'll see a decent recovery trend this year.
So our team is looking for like a domestic market.
Luxury can spend increased by 15 percent.
And globally we are still seeing a slightly 25 percent growth this year
that it's that external the outbound spending component that's been a little
bit softer. Right.
And you saw that reaction in stocks like Estee LAUDER, for example.
When do you expect to see a full recovery when it comes to outbound
spending more? Do you think the spending patterns will
be will remain a little bit different post reopening?
Mm hmm. Yeah.
So on the one side, if we look at all bound travel so far, you're doing the
holidays around 40 percent of pretty coffee level in terms of international
flights. And looking at the visitation to a Hong
Kong to McCall is back to 60 to 70 percent of that pre coffee level.
So I think the pass is still there and waste increasing flight and also more
visa being granted. I think the trend will be gradually
picking up. So as a result, by end of the year, our
team is actually looking for the all about travel visitation number could go
back to almost a 100 percent lagging 90, 100 percent of the pre Covid level.
And on the other side, I think spending power is true.
I think there's always about a lot of debate on the spending power
improvement, but at least we are seeing that there over traffic activity is
improving and we see better traffic activity improving.
We think the spending power will gradually catch up.
The problem with this post reopened. A rebound is that it can be temporary.
The revenge spending, the reunion dressing, top consumer trends tend to
fade. Do you see this as being a
self-sustaining cycle when it comes to the consumer, particularly at a time
when we see the property sector, you know, such a big source of household
wealth still not really recovering very strongly?
Yes, indeed. I think past three years we see during
the holidays and when there were promotional activities like July 18,
like W Lab and consumer US appetite for spending is pretty strong.
And usually the holiday performers are much better than the off peak season as
our performers. But having say that, if we look at first
quarter results, even Chinese New Year improvement is pretty encouraging.
And of Chinese new after Chinese New Year, a slow down.
But the overall aggregate first quarter is performance.
We think it is on track of our earlier expansion.
So on the one side, we don't see that pent up demand will drive those
significant BOVESPA during a holiday. But oh, I think from the sequential
trend perspective, we still believe on the quarter over quarter perspective, we
are seeing gradual improvement throughout the whole year.
If employment market continues to improve and wage inflation starts to be
more stabilized.