Miryang City Declares Opening of 'Travel Department Store' Expected to Attract 16 Million Visitors Next Year

Coming-of-Age Ceremony Promotes the Tourist City of Miryang

Miryang City in Gyeongnam designated 2023 as the Year of Visiting Miryang and held a proclamation ceremony at The Westin Chosun Seoul hotel.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Wook] On the afternoon of the 26th, Miryang-si, Gyeongnam declared 2023 as the Year of Visiting Miryang and held a proclamation ceremony at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul.

Through the proclamation of the ‘2023 Year of Visiting Miryang,’ the city aims to attract 16 million visitors, announcing to the outside world the beginning of its transformation into an attractive tourist city and launching a large-scale marketing campaign.

The proclamation ceremony marks a tourism coming-of-age event to build and brand the image of ‘Clean Yeongnam Alps Tourist Attraction City Miryang’ as Miryang, the city of Arirang, celebrates the 10th anniversary of Arirang’s inscription as a UNESCO heritage.

The city is promoting a strategy to make Miryang a ‘travel department store’ city by utilizing the culture and tourism resource contents unique to Miryang, beloved by all citizens who are overcoming COVID-19 and making a vigorous leap forward.

As Miryang-si’s specific plans to attract 16 million visitors, the city will ▲establish a Yeongnam tourism hub by opening the Miryang Rural Tourism and Recreation Complex ▲lead the K-culture golden age through globalization of festivals ▲create a Miryang education tourism special zone combining space and tradition ▲build the Miryang Yeongnam Alps forest recreation belt ▲promote sports tourism for a healthy life ▲establish an ESG tourism ecosystem ▲and operate local tourism programs in daily life.

In addition, visitors will be engaged through various programs such as ten major events, joint marketing including accommodation, shopping, and food discounts conducted in cooperation between the public and private sectors, development of representative foods, travel agency incentives, metropolitan city tours, and tour passes linking accommodation, tourist sites, and experiences.

Furthermore, the city plans to actively promote customized travel destination strategies tailored to the characteristics of each generation. For teenagers, it will be an experiential learning educational travel city; for people in their 20s and 30s, an ESG travel city; for those in their 40s and 50s, a performing arts travel city in daily life; and for those in their 60s and 70s, a nature-friendly travel city strategy will be pursued.

Although the number of external visitors has shown an increase of more than 6% for four consecutive years, the proportion of day-trippers is high, and the distribution of visitors from the Yeongnam region including Gyeongnam, Busan, and Daegu is high. Taking this Year of Visiting as an opportunity, the city plans to actively attract visitors from the metropolitan area and develop into a revisit and stay-type tourist city.

By maximizing geographical advantages such as a clean natural environment, abundant cultural heritage, and convenient transportation networks, and improving tourism acceptance systems with citizen participation, Miryang, filled with sunshine loved by all generations, plans to welcome tourists with systematic and diverse policies to become a representative tourist destination in Korea.