Welcia Holdings, Japan’s largest drugstore chain, is more than tripling the number of stores with duty-free counters as it anticipates the return of Chinese group tours for the first time in more than three years.
The company plans to offer duty-free services at 1,000 stores, up from about 260 currently, and it expects tourists to travel beyond Japan’s major cities, a spokesperson for the company said by phone.
Welcia is one of the first Japanese companies to respond to China easing its ban on group tours to a raft of countries last week. The return of tourists from the nation is expected to boost Japan’s economy by about ¥200 billion ($1.4 billion), with total spending by all inbound tourists set to reach ¥4.1 trillion this year, according to an estimate by Kanako Nakamura, an economist at the Daiwa Institute of Research. In 2019, Japan welcomed almost 32 million visitors who spent about ¥4.8 trillion.