“The shopping festival is a growing industry and almost every big city in Asia has its own indigenous annual event,“ says Laila Suhail, chief marketing officer of the Dubai Shopping Festival in the United Arab Emirates, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

As next year‘s Asian travel event calendar shows, there is no shortage of new or newly repositioned shopping festivals. And for as long as they continue to bring in the travelers, tourism authorities in the region will continue to market the idea of retail-theme vacations.

According to Chan Tat Hon, assistant chief executive (leisure) of the Singapore Tourism Board: “This year‘s Great Singapore Sale proved to be a roaring success with both retail sales and visitor arrivals hitting record highs.“ In July, the closing month for the country‘s eight-week shopping fest, 877,000 visitors arrived in the country, a figure that officials attribute to the festival. Combined with June, there were 1.9 million visitors, a nine percent rise over the same period in 2004.

Singapore forecasts that the number of tourists will double to 17 million and tourism receipts to triple to 30 billion Singapore dollars, or C$21 billion, by 2015.

Chan‘s research shows that, on average, half of total visitor expenditure in Singapore went to shopping. “Shopping is key to overseas visitors from the Asia-Pacific region,“ he says. Eight countries from the region ranked among the top 10 markets by shopping expenditure: Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand.

“Asians love to shop and eat and eat and shop. They are among the best retail consumers in the world,“ says Noridah Kamarudin, Hong Kong office director of Tourism Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur‘s Mega Sale Carnival runs for six weeks from the end of July to the start of September, a consolidation of the three discount shopping periods a year that it used to tout.

Hong Kong, which only last year repackaged its summer end-of-season sale into the Hong Kong Shopping Festival, attributes its increase in tourists this year to the festival. It “turned the slow summer period into another peak travel season,“ said a spokesperson for the Hong Kong Tourism Board.

With such lucrative returns, festivals are competing hard to win the favor of shoppers. Bangkok promotes its “Amazing Thailand Grand Sale” during June and July with very aggressive marketing campaigns.

In Malaysia, the government staged a street carnival including fire-eaters in shopping districts.

Singapore runs its shopping festival alongside arts and food festivals.

During its festival, Hong Kong offered 2 million Hong Kong dollars, or C$307,024, worth of Lucky Draw prizes, including diamonds and luxury watches.

Next year the Dubai Shopping Festival, from Jan 4 to Feb 4, will include international theater and fashion, handicraft, fireworks and laser shows as well as a film festival, a jazz festival and children‘s entertainment programs, all to lure shoppers.

The emirate will also give away raffle prizes worth a total of US$2.7 million (C$3.2 million) in cash, 100 kilograms of gold and 10 brand new cars.