Utilizing the Mobile-Based App 'Zepeto'
[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] The Korea Tourism Organization has launched an online promotion of Korean travel targeting Generation Z using the mobile-based 3D avatar creation application 'Zepeto'.
On the 16th, the Tourism Organization announced that it has been showcasing a virtual Korean travel experience space using Zepeto to the world since the 12th. Zepeto is a global platform used by 190 million people worldwide that utilizes facial recognition, augmented reality (AR), and 3D technology to create avatars reflecting users' personalities, allowing them to enjoy social activities in virtual spaces. The target audience is people in their teens and twenties who are familiar with mobile environments.
The virtual Korean travel destination built on Zepeto is Hangang Park. Hangang Park was selected as the number one Korean tourist spot that users want to visit in a survey conducted in August with 22,000 Zepeto users. Users can enjoy the virtual Hangang Park on Zepeto as if they were at the actual riverside, appreciating the Banpo Bridge Rainbow Fountain and Namsan N Tower, taking photos, experiencing a flea market and food trucks recreating the Seoul Night Market, cooking ramen at a convenience store, and even crossing the Hangang River by riding water taxis and tube scooters. Additionally, users can create vlogs or music videos with Hangang Park as the background and share them on their social networking services (SNS). The service is available in five languages: Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian. This service attracted significant attention, with about 257,000 visitors within just one day of its launch.
The Tourism Organization also implemented various tourism contents preferred by Generation Z on Zepeto. A mini-game that recommends Korean travel destinations suited to one's personality based on the MBTI personality test started on October 15 and has so far attracted about 310,000 users and generated over 51,000 SNS shares.
Hwang Seung-hyun, Director of the International Tourism Office at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, "This is a very new attempt to promote Korean tourism by focusing on the growth of Generation Z, our future potential customers, through digital immersive content during the long tunnel of the COVID-19 pandemic." He added, "We will advance digital marketing and foster it as a core business of the Tourism Organization."
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