With sales clerks wearing face masks and ubiquitous bottles of hand sanitisers around, the effect of the coronavirus pandemic is impossible to miss at Paris department store Le Bon Marché.

But perhaps the most striking evidence is in a top floor lounge where customers from outside the EU process their sales tax refunds. Before the pandemic, the world’s oldest department store, owned by luxury group LVMH, would have 12 counters open for tourists to reclaim taxes. Last week, the lone clerk on duty said she had handled just three refunds that day.

As the fashion capitals of Paris, Rome and Milan stir back to life, the luxury industry faces a stark reality: Chinese tourists, who accounted for two-thirds of the sector’s sales in Europe before Covid-19, are absent and unlikely to return any time soon.