Measures to Attract
Inbound Tourists

2007 Korea Travel Conference in Incheon discusses ways to increase foreign tourist arrivals

The 2007 Korea Travel Conference was held on Feb. 27-28 at Ramada Songdo Hotel in Incheon organized by the Korea Tourist Organization with over 1,600 people from the tourism industry attending. Among the foreign guests was Dr. Taleb Rifai, deputy secretary general of the UN WTO, who delivered a keynote speech at the meeting.
Kim Chan, director-general of the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, spoke about the government tourism promotion policies for this year at the meeting. He said the government has increased its budget for tourism promotion and marketing by 20 billion won to 30 billion won. Now, he said, the Korean tourism has reached a stage where it would have to make its tourism brand known throughout the world by introducing tourism products that will remind Korea in the minds of global tourists and the government will lead the effort to produce such products.
The government's tourism promotion policies will now be geared to expanding the role of the private sector in selling Korean tourism and cutting the role of the government. He said local area tourism has emerged as a focus of Korean tourism among various changes in the tourism patterns, a development calling for tourism by local residents in what can be dubbed as ,"residents tourism,"the director-general said.
The government-led tourism development like developing tourism systems and tourism products has limits. The private sector has to take charge of those efforts.
He said the development of tourism resources are made by residents of communities that have good tourism resources to look at how tourism products are made in advanced countries. It is neither the central governments nor local administrations that build tourism infrastructures.
The director-general also urged tourism agencies to have a long-term outlook for the development of the tourism industry and stop competition that leads to price cuts, warning that dark clouds hanging over the tourism industry won't be lifted unless such short-sighted unwholesome practices are suspended.
Local residents should set up systems to enable their direct participation in the development of tourism products for their respective communities and recommend tourism policies to official tourism authorities. The publication of tourism guide booklets and the operation of tourism guide outlets can be handled by residents of regional societies, he said.
CEO Kim Jong-min of Korea Tourism Organization said in his opening speech of the travel conference that Incheon, the host city of the meeting, will continue to grow to be a tourism hub in Northeast Asia, after the port city holds the Visit Incheon Year events and the World City Expo successfully and stages the 2014 Asian Games and reborn as an international tourist city.
He said the travel conference takes turns every year in locating a host city in the context that it will help develop the host city by under a nationwide spotlight and attracting tourists and contribute to balanced development of the country.
He said the theme for this year's travel conference is "Look, Look, Corner, Corner,"to call on every tourism industry people to travel widely around the country to find new "tourism jewels"buried underground. He said he hopes everyone who participated in the city tour of the host city and a cruise tour would have seen "tourism jewels"hidden in the port city and help spread the tourism information of the city throughout the country.
Our country tourism industry is growing day by day with inbound tourist arrivals totaling over 6.15 million last year, 11.7 million outbound tourists and 420 million intra-bound tourists, shattering records in their respective areas, the KTO president said. He said now is the time to look at the world and neighboring countries to further develop the country's tourism industry. UNWTO deputy Secretary-General Taleb Rifai spoke on "the Asia-Pacific Tourism Market and Mega Trends in Tourism Market,"and let us know about the flow of big changes in the world tourism. In the workshop to be held in the afternoon on attracting 7 million tourist arrivals, we will have heads of the KTO's 26 overseas branches join tourism industry people, and local autonomous organization officials to discuss strategies to attract increased number of foreign tourists to the country.
He said the KTO have tried to provide a variety of programs to the participants in the conference. They include the opportunities between foreign and domestic tourism agents to discuss businesses, special speeches on outbound tourism in Japan and China, a briefing on government tourism policies, a briefing on KTO projects, strategies to attract FIT and a seminar to spur tourism in Incheon.
He said he would like to introduce Korea's new tourism marketing brand dubbed, "Korea, Sparkling,"which is hoped to convey, recharged energy, resplendent Korea, and smart image of Korea.
The new brand is designed to make global tourists want to visit a sparkling Korea, a country they want to visit and revisit.
At the seminar on strategies to attract foreign tourists, Kang Shin-young, senior research staff for the Samsung Economic Research Institute, said the government plans to attract 7 inbound tourist arrivals this year, but at the present rate, it will be able to attract 10 million foreign tourists by 2015, not able to arrest ballooning tourism account deficit created since 2001, which totaled $7.6 billion last year.
Experts said what the country needs is a drastic tourism policy to stem the deficit as soon as possible rather than gradual measures. They include efforts to tap the Chinese and Japanese tourism markets, which have large potentials with programs and high value-added tourism products.
SERI's Kang is it is feasible to hike the portion of tourism in GDP to 10 percent by 2010 from the current 6 percent by introducing a luxury tourist package linking traditional culture, with IT and design. He said the new tourism package will be able to boost the number of people employed in the tourism industry from 850,000 to 2 million in five years.
If succeeds in creating such a high valued-added tourism package, per capita spending by foreign tourists that visit Korea would rise to around $1,300 from $870.
The government would have to hike the target levels of the tourism industry by deepening the public understanding of the industry as a key to the national economy, The industry is able to create 52 jobs per 1 billion won investment, much higher than the IT industry's 10 jobs about double other industries. The entire government should take care of the industry, not just the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, because of its capacity to create jobs.
Reports said the government's budget for tourism came to 2.5 percent of total budget, compared to 10.2 percent in Singapore, 4.1 percent in Japan, and 3.8 percent in China. The government used to increase on average of 23.8 percent per year since 1997, but the Roh government only increased 12 percent per year on average since it came to power, the reports said.
Professor Lee Yon-taik of Hanyang University tourism dep's, said the development of tourism requires a joint push by several government ministries concerned including the Ministries of Commerce, Industry and Energy, Construction and Transportation and Agriculture and Forestry in addition to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism since it relates to various sectors of society.
The industry is like an automobile as it needs many parts. Hotels need food and even if they have food services, tourists need shopping malls for shopping. These show that the government should not only build infrastructure, but also industrial systems linked each other to make tourism successful, the professor said.
President Park Sang-hwan of Hana Tour Co. called for relaxation of various regulations related to the issuance of entry visas and immigration. Singapore opened its job market to foreign citizens and one of the results was lowered charges for hotels because of cuts in wages to bellboys and cleaning women. We ought to ease the regulations for foreign workers to cut tourism expenses and prevent business firms relocating to foreign countries to reduced production costs, he said.
"We ought to think about measures to have foreign tourists to stay longer once they arrive in the county,"he said. nw

President of Korea Tourism Organization Kim Jong-min.