Seoul’s Stepped-Up Tourism Marketing

City to focus on international mega events in Seoul like G-20 Summit,
World Design Capital Seoul 2010 to attract foreign tourists

The Seoul Metropolitan Government is proud of its record in attracting foreign tourists last year with the number of foreign tourists up 15 percent to 6.51 million as of the end of October, following a 7 percent increase in 2008 to 6.89 million, Director-General Kang Cheol-won of the Public Relations and Planning Dep’t of Seoul City said recently.
Seoul City attracted the largest number of foreign tourists among large cities in Korea last year, which is credited to the effectiveness of the capital city’s well-designed tourism promotion policies. The swell in the number is clearly more surprising as it is ongoing despite the swine flu pandemic sweeping the world.
The city’s tourism promotion department is confident that this year, too, will be a boom year for tourism, as it is the initial year for the Visit Korea Year 2010-2012 foreign tourist attraction campaign built around such mega international events as the World Design Capital―World Design Cities Summit on Feb. 23-24 in Seoul, hosted by Seoul City and organized by the Seoul Design Foundation and the Seoul Design Center. The Seoul Design Assets Exhibition opened on Jan. 8 and is scheduled to close on March 7. These events are related to World Design Capital Seoul 2010, which is expected to bring a large number of participants from abroad, along with the G-20 Summit scheduled for November this year.
The Lunar New Year holiday, which fell on Feb. 13 this year, attracted a huge number of Chinese tourists to Korea, including Seoul and Jeju Island, with some 37,000 tourists from China projected to arrive in Korea during the holiday. The projected number is up 20 percent from the 31,000 Chinese tourists that came to Korea last year and up 44 percent compared to the 3,670 daily average of Chinese visitors last year.
Seoul City is also counting on its 2010 MICE tourist promotion plan this year. MICE stands for “meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions.” The city expects to attract 300,000 tourists to the capital this year as many MICE events are to be held in Seoul this year. The city has decided to extend support to those events including financial assistance for conventions related to the G-20 Summit. The financial support would range from 60 million won to 100 million won to help bring large international conventions to Seoul.

International conventions with 2,000 or more participants would be given a large amount of financial support with special support based on the type of convention to encourage the attraction of large conventions to Seoul. Seoul City expects many business meetings to be held in Seoul in the wake of the G-20 Summit with many global business leaders from G-20 member countries coming to the city.
The city plans to give various incentives to those international business meetings related to the G-20 Summit including those to be held in December on such matters as rent, convention expenses and tourism expenses, transportation, lodging, welcoming events at airports and free rental of U-tour terminals and others.
Seoul City plans to step up its tourism campaigns around the world focusing on such large meetings as the G-20 Summit, the World Design Capital Seoul 2010 and the Yeosu Expo in 2012, among others.
According to AC Nielson, a well-known global survey firm, Seoul has been picked as the city that most people wanted to visit in countries like Japan, China and Thailand as a result of the city’s tourism marketing programs abroad last year.
The survey company took four surveys in the tourism target countries for Korea, once in May and then in August, November and December with 2,100 respondents between the ages of 18 and 54. The surveys found that Korea lagged behind in fourth place before the survey, but it climbed to the top spot following the November survey, to first place in Japan from second place and remained at the top in Thailand throughout the survey, Director-General Hwang Cheol-won of the Public Relations Planning Office for Seoul City said.
According to a survey by TNS Sport, a professional sports survey firm on fans of the Manchester United Football Club, the rate of understanding for Seoul rose to 38 percent this year from 14 percent in 2008. There were three surveys, one in October 2008, the second one in February 2009 and the third one in May 2009. The first survey had a total of 18,000 respondents including 8,100 in Great Britain, 4,800 in Japan, China and Malaysia and 5,100 others.
Seoul City’s sponsorship of sports events boosted its image to 30 percent in the second survey from 14 percent in the first survey and to 38 percent in the third survey. The digital ads boosted Seoul’s image to 44 percent of the respondents in the survey, and its sponsorship of the British soccer club to 45 percent.
The city boosted its ad budget in 2008 to 28.8 billion won from 5.3 billion won in 2007 and to 21.3 billion won this year to hike its international image, determining that the ads on Korean tourism before 2008 through CNN and other overseas media managed by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) fell short of meeting its targets.
Those who wanted to visit Seoul increased after seeing ads on TV in China to 89.5 percent from 80.3 percent before seeing ads; to 66.6 percent in Japan after seeing TV ads from 62 percent before TV ads; and to 88.7 percent after seeing TV ads from 81 percent before TV ads in Thailand.
The city switched to target marketing ads to show the city as a city where culture can be experienced by employing Seoul as the subject, along with ads employing local personalities such as film director Chen Kaige in China, author Ryu Murakami in Japan, photographer Anuchai in Southeast Asia and pianist George Winston in North America and Europe. The ads were made based on five target regions and countries ― China, Japan, Southeast Asia, North America and Europe.
The new ads included a synopsis of preferred sights of Seoul by the target country and region and appealing tourist sites picked from surveys.
This year, new ads were attempted by employing cameo appearances by “Hallyu” stars in a fresh attempt to expose Seoul by strengthening the focus on Seoul as a tourist and cultural destination. nw

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, in the inset with an ancient Jong-kak or Bell Tower located on Jeong-ro 3rd Street in downtown Seoul.

An artist conception of the Seoul Design Olympic that took place last year.