Overseas Travel Suspended
Airline Ticket Vouchers Extended Until Next Year
[Asia Economy Reporter Ki Ha-young] As the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has made overseas travel impossible, credit card companies have started extending the validity period of overseas flight tickets and hotel vouchers.
According to the industry on the 9th, Shinhan Card recently decided to uniformly extend the validity period of overseas flight tickets and hotel vouchers until December next year. This applies to five premium cards including 'The Premier Gold Edition', 'The Premier', 'The Ace Blue Label', 'The Ace', and 'The Best'. KB Kookmin Card also plans to extend the validity period of flight ticket vouchers provided to customers using flight ticket voucher cards such as the 'ROVL Card' and BeV Card until the end of next year.
Samsung Card is currently extending the validity period of flight ticket vouchers by six months or providing substitute vouchers in the form of Shinsegae gift certificates. Lotte Card also allows the extension of flight ticket voucher usage up to one year and permits usage with other vouchers such as Lotte gift certificates. Hyundai, Hana, and BC Cards have also extended the validity period of flight ticket vouchers until the end of next year, and Woori Card allows customers to continuously extend the period in three-month increments if desired.
The reason credit card companies are extending voucher validity periods like this is that overseas travel has been virtually halted due to the impact of COVID-19. With overseas travel impossible, using overseas flight tickets, duty-free discounts, and local hotel stays have become difficult. In particular, most cards offering voucher services are premium cards with higher annual fees compared to regular cards, so it is interpreted that credit card companies are taking measures to prevent the loss of high-quality customers.
In fact, due to the impact of COVID-19, the amount of card usage approvals overseas has sharply declined. According to the 'Card Overseas Usage Performance of Residents in the Third Quarter' recently announced by the Bank of Korea, the total overseas usage amount of cards (credit, check, debit) by domestic residents during this period was $2.17 billion (approximately 2.403 trillion KRW). This is a 54.8% decrease compared to the same period last year ($4.79 billion / 5.3034 trillion KRW).
An industry official said, "Due to the impact of COVID-19, credit card companies that had extended flight ticket vouchers once until the end of this year are now extending the voucher validity period until next year as the pandemic prolongs."
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