OREANDA-NEWS. Dufry has signed an agreement to develop a downtown travel retail operation in Genting Highlands, an Integrated Resort owned by the Genting Group and located in the Titiwangsa Mountains, northeast of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The development will be the only travel retail store in the area and it marks an important development for Dufry, by giving it a presence in a new Southeast Asian market.

Work on the 1,146 m2 store is already underway and the anticipated completion date is Q1 2018. The store will be situated in the New Sky Avenue shopping mall, which consists of four floors of dining and shopping outlets being created to cater for 26 million visitors per annum expected as of 2018. New Sky Avenue is conveniently connected to the many hotels and attractions in the resort. The Dufry store benefits from maximum visibility as it’s located right by the entrance to the Genting Skyway cable car, which transports visitors to the highest point of the extensive hilltop resort.

The duty free store will offer customers a comprehensive assortment of world-famous brands of the core categories such as perfumes and cosmetics, confectionery, watches & jewelry, health and wellbeing as well as consumer electronics and a selection of Malaysian products and brands to convey a strong sense of place of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia.

Significant visitor affluence is driven by the mixture of leisure, entertainments and shopping in the resort, including the 20th Century Fox Theme Park and four casinos. Strong growth amongst Chinese visitors in particular is expected in the next few years, with the majority of Chinese tour groups including Genting Highlands as a day trip activity. In 2016, it is estimated that 600,000 Chinese visitors stayed within the hotels at Genting Highlands.

Andrea Belardini, Dufry CEO in Asia, Middle East and Australia commented, “The development of downtown businesses is one of the growth channels in our strategic business plan and we are delighted to have won the opportunity to develop this unique store in the impressive Genting Resort. This store development in Kuala Lumpur will be the first of its kind in Malaysia and our special thanks must go to our joint venture partner Ho Wah Genting, with whom we are working in close collaboration to create an outstanding retail operation at Genting Resort and which has vast number of visitors. We are looking forward to continuing to build our strong business relationship and successful partnership over the coming years.”

Dato Aaron Lim, CEO of Ho Wah Genting added, “We are pleased to have Dufry, the World’s leading travel retailer as our partner and we are full of confidence of successful partnership. With this collaboration, we look forward to providing an exciting shopping experience for visitors of Genting Highlands, leveraging on the worldclass retail expertise of Dufry.”