Spring Festival, Valentine's lovely mix for city retailers

THE traditional Chinese Spring Festival, coupled with the Western-originated Valentine's Day, has proved a good combination for Shanghai retailers.

With people busy tying the knot and buying jewelry to demonstrate love, the average daily sales of city retailers reached 793 million yuan (US$125.8 million) during the past seven days, according to the Shanghai Commission of Commerce yesterday.

The combined sales of the city's 4,000-plus stores belonging to 466 large and medium-sized retailers reached 5.55 billion yuan from February 9 to February 15, up 10.2 percent from a year earlier.

Wedding ceremonies were a strong force driving up growth. According to the commission, 25 hotels and restaurants under Shanghai Jin Jiang International Hotels (Group) Co Ltd hosted 2,290 wedding banquets in the past seven days. Among them, sales at Hua Ting Hotel surged 12.2 times thanks to more wedding banquets, while others all boasted double-digit growth.

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