Swiss duty-free retailer Dufry expects to reopen more than 90% of its sales capacity by April as travel rebounds from the pandemic slump, it said on Tuesday, after its 2021 turnover met its worst case scenario forecast.

​Seen by many as downmarket eyesores, Oxford Street’s raft of candy stores in London, alongside tourist shops and phone repair shops, could soon disappear if Westminster Council gets its way.

​Hermès was the latest luxury group to signal a strong recovery on Friday with the French firm’s Q4 and full-year sales highlighting the resilience of the biggest global luxury names both during and after the pandemic.

​As retailers continue to campaign against the UK's changes to VAT-free shopping rules, new analysis from GlobalData claims Britain will lose its top spot in the European ‘duty-free’ market as spend falls 70% by 2025.

​The easing of Plan B Covid restrictions in England over the past week has seen consumers returning to London’s West End, which is home to the flagship stores of many of the fashion sector’s biggest retail names.

​Luxe French swimwear label Vilebrequin has appointed IMG to “extend its brand globally through product and brand licensing partnerships, in a multi-year global deal”.

​Selfridges Retail Limited has filed its full accounts for the year to the end of January 2021 and they show the devastation that the pandemic wreaked in what should have been another good year for the company.

​Harvey Nichols saw its sales plummeting in the year to the end of March with a drop to £121 million from a pre-pandemic £222 million.

Three years of democracy protests followed by a pandemic have devastated Hong Kong retailers who had grown used to relying on cash from mainland Chinese tourists.

​It’s official — Thailand’s Central and Austria’s Signa are buying Selfridges Group from the Weston family. The transaction “will create one of the world’s leading omnichannel luxury department store groups”.

The US beauty group has promoted Umair Ansari to the post of VP and managing director of its European travel retail division, adding Europe to the Middle East and Africa regions he has been overseeing since 2019.

​Luxury London store Fortnum & Mason has named Iain Robertson to the newly created role of chief operating and innovation officer. He joins in February. 

More than half of Britons (52%) now claim they never take notes or coins with them on routine trips, instead using their mobile phone to make payments, according to a nationwide survey. 

​Sweden is to host Scandinavia’s largest designer outlet village with the project’s first phase set to open in summer 2025 while phase two will follow in autumn 2027.

​Thailand's Central Group is interested in bidding for Selfridges, a report said Thursday. Interestingly, it also owns La Rinascente, the Italian retailer of which ex-Selfridges CEO Vittorio Radice is Vice-Chairman.

​As many analysts and commentators question whether the retail recovery – and specifically the fashion retail recovery – can continue into the heart of the festive season, one key group thinks it can.