HONG KONG - The expansion of Abercrombie & Fitch Co and Gap Inc in Hong Kong may help push shop rents in the Central business district up almost 50 percent over the next three years, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

The US-based retailers will open flagship stores on or near Queen's Road Central by the first quarter of next year. Rolex Group, the Swiss watchmaker, has agreed to renew the lease for a nearby shop at a monthly rate of HK$2.4 million ($308,000), or HK$25,834 a square meter, the second-highest in the city, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported on Thursday, without saying where it got the information.

Hong Kong's street shop rents rose 7.4 percent to a record in the second quarter from the previous three months as retail sales climbed and more tourists from other parts of China visited the city, according to Colliers International.

The number of mainland tourists going to Hong Kong jumped 26 percent to 22.7 million in 2010 from a year earlier, according to the city's tourism board. The figure reached a daily record of 122,893 on April 30.

"The key to retail is foot traffic and exposure," said Tom Gaffney, Hong Kong-based director of retail at Jones Lang LaSalle, the world's second-biggest commercial brokerage, which forecasts rents in the area to rise as much as 48 percent over the next three years.

In Central, he said, "you're seeing these international brands all expanding into one core area and that's going to cause a huge amount of traffic to flood to one location".

Mainland tourists account for about 30 percent of retail spending in Central, Gaffney said.

Hong Kong's retail sales jumped 28.8 percent in June to HK$31.3 billion, the biggest gain in more than a year, on tourist arrivals and low unemployment, according to government statistics.

The growth in mainland tourist spending, which took off in 2004 when the central government began easing travel restrictions on mainlanders going to Hong Kong, has in the past few years lured global retailers to set up flagship stores in Hong Kong.

"In the past decade, Central has gradually evolved from a pure business district," said Helen Mak, director of retail services at property brokerage Colliers International.

"There's now a heavier crowd even during non-business hours and a lot of that is the result of the addition of a big shopping mall and flagship stores nearby."

San Francisco-based Gap, the largest US apparel chain, will in November open a ground-floor store at the LHT Tower, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

Across the street, Abercrombie of New Albany, Ohio, is scheduled to open a shop in a space in the Pedder Building occupied by Shanghai Tang, a local high-end fashion retailer, Colliers said.

Bloomberg News