Chinese tourists packing an elevator to the Lotte Duty Free Shop in downtown Seoul can’t take their eyes off a small screen that shows Girls’ Generation twirling around in doll-like garb.

The beaming K-pop group no doubt adds to the shoppers’ delight as they are about to begin the highlight of their trip to Seoul.

Hallyu stars are proving to be highly effective marketing icons for the nation’s largest duty-free shops as they enjoy an avalanche of Chinese and Southeast Asian customers.

Lotte Duty Free Shop started riding the Korean Wave in 2004 with actor Bae Yong-joon, whose character in the drama “Winter Sonata” melted the hearts of countless Japanese women, as its model.

Since then, Lotte has continued to field top hallyu stars such as Choi Ji-woo, Rain and Song Seung-heon as its models. It now has eight entertainment individuals or groups as models, including Jang Keun-suk, Kim Hyun-joong, Super Junior and 2PM.

The annual number of Japanese visitors to Lotte Duty Free Shop was 900,000 in 2003 before it started hallyu marketing, and more than tripled to 3.1 million last year.

In addition to helping promote Korean Wave content, Lotte’s hallyu marketing has successfully led tourists previously headed for Hong Kong or Singapore to turn to Korea.

Lotte combines tourism and entertainment, having hosted more then 30 fan meetings and 13 family concerts by hallyu stars in the past 10 years, attracting more than 40,000 fans to Korea.

The “Star Avenues” at Lotte’s duty-free shops in downtown Seoul and COEX, which showcase hallyu stars’ hand prints, photos and video clips of interviews, have become must-visit spots for tourists.

Some 30,000 people stop by the Star Avenues each month, with more then 1.3 million having visited them since they opened in 2009.

Lotte donates the earnings from the Star Avenues to the Community Chest of Korea.

This year, Lotte added Taiwanese actress Lin Chi-ling and K-pop group Cho Shin Sung, or Supernova, to its lineup of models, and continues to enchant foreign tourists through fan meetings and concerts.

A commercial in the style of a music video featuring the models traveling to Europe, Southeast Asia, China and Japan is currently under production. It is set to be unveiled in August.

Lin, who became a global hotshot by starring in “Red Cliff” and “The Treasure Hunter,” plays Song Seung-heon’s girlfriend in the Lotte commercial.

Cho Shin Sung is the latest top hallyu idol group in Japan, where they released more then 20 albums since 2009 and reached second place on the Orion music chart.

“Surveys showed that our models had a trustworthy and friendly image to customers regardless of their nationality,” said Kim Bo-joon, marketing chief of Lotte Duty Free Shop.

“We plan to expand hallyu marketing to China and Southeast Asia.”

Hallyu is a key marketing strategy for Shilla Duty Free Shop as well.

K-pop group TVXQ and Victoria of girl group f(x) are the current faces of Shilla.

A space on the roof of Shilla Duty Free Shop in downtown Seoul with life-size photo stand-ups of TVXQ members is a must-visit spot for foreign tourists who wish to take photos with them.

Victoria from China’s Chengdu is highly popular as a stylish celebrity in both Korea and China.

She sends out shopping tips for Shilla Duty Free Shops and promotes Korean culture in the Chinese language through her Chinese SNS.

A video showing her shooting the latest Shilla ad got over 600,000 hits in five days on the Internet.

Shilla gives out various gifts featuring its models to the customers and plans to host a fan meeting with TVXQ in the fall.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)