Visit Korea Year 2010-2012

“Make Your Smile Korea’s Gifts”

Next year is the initial year for the Visit Korea Year 2010-2012 and Visit Korea Year Committee has many diversified programs to make the tourism campaign a resounding success under the catchphrase “Make Your Smile Korea’s Gift.”
Visit Korea Year Committee first wants to improve the manner of reception for foreign tourists visiting Korea by improving services, one of the weakest points for Korean tourism through a national campaign to make the public be aware of the problem and show kindness to foreign tourists and thus upgrade the country’s competitive strengthen in tourism.














At the World Economic Forum held in 2007, Korea came in 31st in tourism competitiveness in the world and 112nd in the area of tourist friendliness.
In order to shore up the shortcomings in tourism, the Korean tourism authorities in tandem with private tourism agencies will go out in full by holding various events both at home and abroad.
First, they will make best use of its media campaigns by putting ads on TVs, producing documentaries on art and entertainment programs for TVs, special columns on news papers and magazines in series to let the public to know the importance of being kind to foreign tourists visiting Korea.
The theme of the public campaign ads will focus on such topics as “Make Your Smile Korea’s Gift.”
They will also put together a docu focusing on public awareness of kindness to foreign tourists, which will be shown on MBC-TV and also will provide support to the producers of a variety show on the subject of kindness also to be shown on TV.
Education programs aimed at people working at tourist joints and youths around the country will be made to improve the quality of welcoming services to foreign tourists, along with standardized programs for local autonomous entities to expand friendly manners to foreign tourists.
Contents of the educational programs will be tailored to each group or local entities that need such programs. They will also set up booths at port of entries including the Incheon International Airport, along with welcome songs in some 10 languages and smile badges for those who need them.
The tourism authorities including KTO will also try to expand the hospitality academy to local entities and also the practice of “three don’ts” including shopping, option and tips in Korea to foreign tourists
They also provide education on international service manners, and global etiquettes, and others to students in primary, middle and high schools around the country. Programs will be made easy to understand for general public.Public participation in those education programs will be pushed by creating climate suitable to encourage them with programs that have symbols, subjects, and locations and others that can be issues. On an offline marketing programs will also be employed to invite public participation.
College supporters will be formed first and then youths, employees, housewives, and senior citizens. Supporters, so called smile national representatives, will be in operation. UCC, posters and photo exhibitions will be held for public collection backed up by online marketing such as the power broker.
Youths will be encouraged to join programs made with “Ppororo” a popular character domestically produced at home and abroad to trump up Korea’s tourism campaigns.
The system for evaluation of tourist welcome services will be improved to check service quality and others that undermine tourism so that it can put up matters need to be reformed and help set up the tourism plans for the following year.
The purpose of the evaluation system is to map out strategies for each tourism regions in the country, tailored to each business in those regions and develop manuals for tourism services and supply them to tourism agencies so that tourism service quality can be measured and effectively managed.
Overseas Marketing to attract foreign tourists to Korea will be promoted with strategies for each market in order of importance in a bid to attract increased number of foreign tourists to Korea. Media ads, public relations network, event marketing and online media ads and means of public relations channels will be utilized to push tourism marketing overseas.
Commercial films will be made tailored to each market country such as Japan, China, and other key countries in Europe and North America put them on TVs on those countries such as NHK in Japan, CCTV in China and BBC in Britain, among others.
Special tourism promotion missions will be sent abroad during the Visit Korea Year made up of local autonomous entities, NTO and RTO and other related organizations in the country for creation of marketing synergy for maximum effects from the missions’ activities abroad with promotional efforts diversified to meet the needs of each tourism market.
Missions will focus in such important countries as Japan (Tokyo, Osaka), China(Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai), Taiwan, the southeast Asian countries (Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur), among others.
In addition to the dispatches of tourism missions abroad, KTO will extensively rely on overseas branches and contact network to fan Korean tourism regularly by holding sessions to explain what the Korean tourism is all about.
To be exclusively taken advantage of in key countries are local media, tourism agencies, travel agents to be invited to Korea, the evenings for Korean culture and tourism and entertainment programs including performances by Korean star performers including popular singers and dancers that make up a unique Korean entertainment going by the name of the Korean-style entertainment, “Hallyu.”
The tourism industry is up to producing typical products for Korean tourism, targeted at tourists from countries that usually send many tourist to Korea including Japan, and China that are able to meet their preferences and diversified enough to publicize the Visit Korea Year.
The special tourism products will feature such matters as beauty of Korea, fashion, Korean food, medical facilities and Korean-style entertainment stars and also to help fan tourism exchange of senior people and youths in Korea, Japan and China.
The tourism authorities plan also to link mega-events with tourism promotion activities both at home and abroad as a means to maximize the attractive points of the Korean tourism. The mega-events at home next year such as the 2010 Seoul Design Capital, the 2011 Daegu Track and Field Championship, the 2012 Yeosu Expo, among others, will be taken advantage of in the tourism promotion programs during the Visit Korea Year.
This year, the Visit Korea Year Committee led by Chairman Shin Dong-bin held a D-minus 50 Days event at Cheonggye Stream downtown Seoul on the night of Nov. 11 to herald the kick-off of the tourism promotion activities during the special Korean tourism promotion period.
Dignitaries at the exciting event included the First Lady, Kim Yoon-ok, who is an honorary chairman of the Visit Korea Year Committee, Minister Yu In-chon of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon.
Minister Yu, the First Lady and Chairman Shin, among others, made speeches at the start of the event, which was made doubly exciting as it coincided with the Seoul Lantern Festival, along the stream dissecting the downtown area of the capital with so many tourism related people including stewardesses, taxi drivers ,hotel bellboys, and tour guides crowding the event. nw

Dignitaries, including First Lady Kim Yoon-ok, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Yu In-chon and Shin Dong-bin, chairman of the Visit Korea Year Committee, attend a ceremony to celebrate the countdown of the opening of the “Visit Korea Years 2010-2012.”

KTO President Lee Cham at an event to declare the Visit Korea Year starting from 2010-2012 in Tokyo with Actor Bae Yong-joon, recently named as an ambassador for Korean tourism.

A crowd with “smile” cards made by KTO which adopted “Make Your Smile, Korea’s Gift” as the theme of the tourism campaign. Shown also is the mascot of the Visit Korea Year.