Int'l Travel Mart in Seoul June 1-5

Event to attract more foreign tourists to Korea and develop tourism products



Korea International Travel Mart (KITM) will open from June 1-5 at COEX and the Lotte Hotel in Seoul with travel agents and related firms participating in one of the largest tourism events in the world. Travel agencies from North America, Europe, Australia, China, Japan and Southeast Asia are expected to attend the global event.
NewsWorld met with Sec.-Gen. Hong Ju-min of the Visit Korea Year Council and asked him about what Korea can get out of holding the Korea International Travel Mart this year following the one held last year and the means to go about attracting more foreign tourists to Korea and the success of the VKY campaign. He said making Korea more attractive as a tourist destination and providing better services and a warmer welcome are key to the benefits Korea can get out of the global tourism event, including ways to lure more foreign tourists.
Following are what Sec.-Gen. Hong had to say during the interview:
Question: Could you please, introduce us to the Korea International Travel Mart?
Answer: The participants in this major global tourism event, an inbound travel mart where Korean inbound tour agents will meet with foreign outbound travel agents to take up such issues as the development of new Korean tourism products for inbound tourists. It will be an integrated tourism exposition, not to be held just once, but to be a long-term event. We expect the global tourism event to be a phenomenal one in terms of satisfying all of the demands of not only tourism-related organizations, but also general tourists. Participants will include such notables as Chairman Shin Dong-bin of the Visit Korea Year Committee, Minister Choung Byoung-gug of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and others from foreign and domestic tourism industries totaling some 400 people.
Some of the major events at the tourism gathering will include the opening ceremony on June 1; the 10 famous Korean tourism brands; the introduction of Korean tourism; and the B2B travel mart, to be participated in by 150 overseas outbound tourism agents and some 250 Korean inbound travel agents on June 2. On June 3, the participants will be guided through tour courses of the Visit Korea Year where special events will take place including Busan, North Gyeongsang Province, Jeju Island, Gangwon Province, South Chungcheong Province and South Jeolla Province, designed to develop tourism products reflecting the facilities and shapes of those tour courses.

Q: What are major differences of the event this year compared with the previous tourism marts held in Korea?
A: Included in the upcoming tourism mart is the Korea International Tourism Exhibition, the largest tourism fair in Korea, to present comprehensive tourism contents representing Korea to some 150 buyers from overseas. I think the B2B consultations with overseas buyers by domestic tourism agents through online appointments will be one of the highlights of the international tourism event. Last year, some 600 tourism sales consultations were made with over 150 overseas tourism agents. This helped the Korean tourism industry's strategy to diversify its tourism market to countries other than Japan, China and Southeast Asia. From April 1, tourism buyers from 11 Southeast Asian countries visited Korea and got information on Korean tourism products including K-Pop, which will be scheduled to be presented at the Hallyu Dream Festival in Gyeongju in September. One of the objectives of the Mart is to invigorate local tourism in Korea, as the country aims to attract 20 million foreign tourists by 2020 compared to the 10 million targeted in 2010.
Having foreign tourists visit local regions in Korea is very important because most of them stayed in Seoul and its vicinities, which limited their spending and reduced the revisit rates. The Seoul area can only accommodate no more than 10 million tourists a year and lodging capacities in the local regions are no better off. Efforts are underway to develop tourism packages linking local tourism and the Seoul area. We also have to diversify our tourism markets to cover the tourism loss incurred by the tsunami in Northeast Japan by attracting more tourists from China and Southeast Asian countries through various improvements, including the revision of the entry visa issuance system and others.

Q: The Visit Korea Year campaign is at the halfway point. What are some of the major programs in the remaining half of the campaign?
A: Last year, when the VKY campaign kicked off, the tourist arrivals in Korea came to 8.8 million, up 10 percent from the previous year, as it was the year for laying the foundation for the success of the tourism attraction campaign including action plans by the sector to run the campaign effectively. This year we plan to speed the campaign by sectors and areas, picking out new tourism businesses through concentration and selection.
The popularity of Hallyu, or Korean entertainment, has now spread from Japan, China and Southeast Asia to Europe and North America. A member of Korea Connection in France visited Korea recently and a Korean arts festival held in Paris on May 8 attracted the attention of the French people, who enjoyed it very much.
On June 10, a Hallyu concert featuring such popular Korean entertainers as Dongbangshinki and Sonyo Shidae will be held and tickets for 7,000 seats were sold out in 15 minutes and the fans wanted a second concert so they can watch it. We plan to take advantage of the events and other Korean culture products including ancient traditional arts and mega events taking place in Korea to drum up the Visit Korea Year tourism campaign to attract more foreign tourists to Korea.
We have been working on the ways to connect the VKY campaign to excellent Korean contents such as K-POP, the singer Rain's world tour, Dream Concert and K-Pop cover dance along with other large entertainment events at home and overseas. The VKY campaign is fully aware that the world is interested in the Korean lifestyle in general such as food, clothes, family life and others basics.

Q: Could you please update us on the events and programs that are scheduled for the second half of this year?
A: We plan to unfurl four major events in the second half kicked off by the Gyeongju Hallyu Festival followed by the Jeonju Korean Traditional Food Tourism Festival, and the Busan Fireworks Festival. The Jeju Walking Contest Festival will have its initial start this year on Nov. 6-11 during which the seven most wondrous natural scenes in the world will be announced for synergy between the two events. We will also take advantage of such international events as the Daegu International Track and Field Meet, the Yeosu Expo, and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics － if Pyeongchang wins the bid － in the promotion of the VKY campaign.
In the second half of this year, we plan to complete the three major festivals to be held in the first half next year, including their contents and work on drumming up support for the seven special events to be staged in connection with the VKY campaign for 2012 in the latter half.
We plan to give all kinds of support to tourism events to be held in Korea next year, including those in the preparation stages such as the Rally for the Inclusion of Jeju among the seven famous sceneries in the world so that posters for the event can be made. Our support will also go to the development of middle and low-priced tourism products to create a balance with the cheaper tourism products among our diverse efforts. We also will give our support to hygienic matters in the preparation of foods, kitchens and upgrading the service culture in Korea.

Q: You have been in the tourism industry for over three decades. What are some of the things that should be renovated as the VKY is being pushed?
A: For the VKY to be a success, we need the positive participation of our people and their manners in welcoming foreign tourists have to be changed. We have to impress them with a warm welcome that will make them want to return to Korea for another visit. So we plan to improve the tourism infrastructure in cooperation with the government and local autonomous governments, or tourism hardware, so to speak, while the tourism industry and the people would work on changing the software, or improving tourism services for foreign tourists.
Ten countries in the world send about 100,000 tourists to Korea, such as Japan and China, and we have strengthen our ties with many other countries including Britain, Germany, India and others so that we can have more tourists from those countries. We plan to increase the number of countries from which we can attract more than 100,000 tourists per year to 20 in the near future.
The VKY committee has been working on a plan to share the need to give a warm welcome to foreign tourists in a campaign jointly with the people and the media. We also are operating a supporters group to entice voluntary participation by the people through online events and an offline marketing campaign. We also have been providing tailor-made education for those who work in the tourism industry in local areas so that they can provide high-quality standardized hospitality services to foreign tourists, while making efforts to build a base for the people to change their perceptions of foreign tourists and upgrade their understanding of them. This is all aimed at providing better services to foreign tourists in an effort to increase the number of tourists arrivals in Korea. nw


Photos on Courtesy of the Visit Korea Year Council