Luxury Knows No Crisis – Market Expected to Grow in 2023

The most expensive car models, pieces of jewelry, apartments and houses are sold the fastest as a rule. Experts says that, even in difficult times, luxury goods record an increase in demand. Those kinds of goods are meant for the small percentage of consumers who can afford it and who are not affected by the inflation or any other kind of crisis. On the other hand, economic challenges force an average consumer to save and more rationally spend the available money, so it’s no wonder that, in both Serbia and the world, the demand for private label brands is growing.

In the past three years, due to the consequences of the pandemic and the problems with the supply chain due to the conflict in Ukraine, the sale of new vehicles in Serbia is dropping. In 2022, compared to 2021, it dropped 5.33%, and compared to 2019, the drop amounted to as much as 16%. Still, the crisis is not felt by the manufacturers of the most expensive vehicles.

– Certainly, vehicles with an affordable price sell more, because, by their very nature, they have a wider a target group. However, luxury or premium vehicles are recording a constant growth in the overall market share and are most frequently not affected by the crisis and the challenges as is the case with the rest of the market – says Aleksandra Djurdjevic, the president of the Serbian Association of Vehicle and Parts Importers.

It's not just cars that are a thing of prestige and status indicators. There’s also the purchase of real estate, but also travel.

– The average price that people pay for travel is around EUR 500, so everything above that could be categorized as luxury. Observed that way, we have plenty of such travels throughout the year, considering that, during the summer season, around 250,000 people stay at hotels. Some of those hotels are considerably more expensive that the price I cited – says Aleksandar Senicic, the director of the National Association of Tourism Agencies YUTA.

– What we categorize as luxury are potentially long or intercontinental trips, of which there are not a lot. There are a few outside the season. It’s mostly some far-away destinations such as Maldives, Seychelles, or for example, Tanzania, Thailand… However, all things considered, Tanzania, for example, for EUR 1,200 or 1,500, is realistically not a luxury trip. It’s an average trip of sorts, because it’s not the destination that’s expensive, but the airline ticket. The same goes for Thailand – adds RTS’s interviewee.

The habits of Serbian consumers, according to experts, are similar to the habits of the customers in Europe and the surroundings. The data show that the biggest consumers of luxury goods in the world are citizens of South Korea, who spent around USD 325 on luxury goods per capita last year. That’s far above USD 55 or 280, which is how much the Chinese and the Americans spend on this type of goods. The predictions are that the luxury market will grow 5-10% in 2023, precisely driven by demand from China and the USA.

Ministarstvo unutrašnje i spoljne trgovine Republike Srbije

PU YUTA Beograd

Srpska asocijacija uvoznika vozila i delova Beograd

Aleksandra Đurđević

Aleksandar Seničić

sale of luxury goods

sale of expensive cars

sale of expensive trips

exotic travel