GITM 2010 Ready to Open at KINTEX

8th annual int’l travel mart to introduce tourism products unique to Gyeonggi Province

The 8th Gyeonggi International Travel Mart (GITM) 2010 will run from Nov. 11-14 at KINTEX in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, near Seoul, the Gyeonggi Tourism Organization (GTO) said recently. The exhibition is hosted by Gyeonggi Province and the Korea Tourism Association with joint management by the GTO and Korea General Travel Agencies Association.
President Kim Myung-soo said the travel mart, with a main theme of Gyeonggi Province, will open the future of Korean tourism and will provide opportunities for travel agencies to buy on-the-spot tourism products selected by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to encourage them to plan tour products based on travel themes, as well as sales plans based on the new system to be introduced at the upcoming expo.
Executive Director Kim Ki-jong of the GTO Marketing Headquarters, said the tourism expo will enable travel agencies to pick tailor-made travel products by comparing them with others on the spot, unlike in past travel expos held in Korea where local autonomous organizations and travel agents offered travel destinations. “At the travel mart next month, systematic travel products sales will be introduced so that tourists might be able to hold consultations with travel agents directly and design travel products at the mart,” the GTO official said.
At the Overseas Public Relations Hall, various countries will be introduced such as India and New Caledonia, as well as famous travel destinations in China including Shandong Province and Hubei Province in particular, Kim said.
Also on display will be Korean tourist attractions such as the demilitarized zone (DMZ), the only such zone in the world where civilians are not allowed to enter, theme packages built around the World Cultural Heritage sites including the Suwon Castle and the royal tombs of the Joseon kings, one of the travel products available in Gyeonggi Province, which are accessible at a low cost and will be able to be experienced at the same time at the travel mart.
In order to make those happen at the upcoming mart, the GTO has been trying to conclude cooperative ties with KATA and other theme travel agencies that can deal with Gyeonggi Province travel products. Through these programs, the GTO will try to offer inexpensive tour packages to tourists in the second half of this year and the first half of next year to spur tourism throughout Korea.
At the same time, various experiential contents will be introduced at the upcoming travel expo, which will include a farm tourism hall where visitors can pick their own mushrooms and do other things that cannot normally be done. The mart will also operate a leisure sports tourism hall. People can view light airplanes on exhibit, experience paragliding on land, sports climbing at the Sports Leisure Zone, mountain bicycling and camping among the outdoor equipment on display at the expo. The viewers also will be able to shoot sports guns, see yachts and kayak at the Water Leisure Zone at the mart.
The 7th GITM 2009 took place from Nov.12-15 at KINTEX, Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, and was hailed as the largest such event in Korea last year. The event was further strengthened to make it a truly international expo providing a system for purchasing travel products on the spot at the mart as well as an expo for employment by the tourism industry.
At the 6th event in 2008, viewers paid 3.9 billion won in admission fees and companies that participated in the event spent 7.3 billion won, bringing a total economic effect of 11.2 billion won, making the expo the largest such event in Korea.
Tourism products will be sold at GITM’s overseas publicity outlets so that tourists can hold consultations on buying travel products to make the expo an integrated travel mart. In order to realize this, the GTO signed an MOU with Ready Get Set Go Co. in Singapore, a professional firm on B2C, and the “Let’s Go! Travel Show 2009 (LGTS)” to hold a joint overseas travel show.
The event that received the most attention for the past two years of the mart is the World Food Festival in which lunch foods from some 20 foreign countries were put on display at the Food Exhibition Hall.
The expo also had display halls for the introduction of 10 tourism locations in Gyeonggi Province including six biological gardens and three plant gardens and natural leisure forests to spur the province’s tourism for families.
The admission fee is 2,000 won for adults, 1,000 won for minors, the same as last year. Children below the age of primary school students, soldiers and policemen, and those senior citizens who have the passes will be admitted free of charge. nw

A scene of people in front of the Gyeonggi Province Travel Product Publicity Hall during the 7th Gyeonggi Province International Travel Mart held at Kintex in Ilsan near Seoul last year.

Various scenes from the 7th Gyeonggi Intl Travel Mart held at Kintex from Nov.12-15,2009.