Ministry of Culture and Tourism Organization Participate in World Tourism Expo
"Feeling Korea's Changed Status... Increase in Transaction Requests"
Our country achieved its best-ever performance at the World Travel Market.
On the 8th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization announced that they participated in the UK International Tourism Expo (WTM) held in London, UK, from the 5th to the 7th (local time) to promote inbound tourism to Korea.
WTM is one of the world's largest international tourism expos, with participation from over 180 countries every year. This year, about 4,000 companies from 148 countries took part.
The Korea Tourism Organization operated a 173.25㎡ Korean tourism promotion booth together with a total of 21 organizations including domestic local governments, travel agencies, airlines, and hotels. In particular, through one-on-one business consultations between domestic and international related industries, they focused on introducing long-term stay travel products tailored to European tourists and linked products with East Asian countries adjacent to Korea.
The number of visitors to the promotion booth during the expo was 4,100, and the number of business consultations was 751. The expected sales from participating companies in consultations are estimated at approximately 29.67 billion KRW, with an estimated 13,725 people attracted.
Hwang Du-yeon, CEO of US Travel Agency, said, “This year marks the 40th year since I started inbound travel business, and I truly feel the changed status of Korea,” adding, “Recently, requests to do business with Korea have increased, and we are considering establishing branches in Poland, Romania, and Mexico.”
From the beginning of this year to September, 860,000 European tourists visited Korea. This is the highest number ever, showing about a 25% increase compared to the same period last year.
Accordingly, the Korean promotion booth introduced experiential programs such as the “Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed” game event, popularized by the Netflix series “Squid Game,” as well as Hangul calligraphy and making Hangul keyrings and bracelets.
The Korea Tourism Organization also created a separate MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, and Exhibitions) space at the promotion booth. Recently, the organization has been focusing on discovering long-distance MICE tourism demand and, for the first time this year, attracted incentive groups and corporate meetings from Europe and Africa.
Kim Kyung-joo, head of the Korea Tourism Organization’s London office, said, “As a strategy to target the European market, which has entered a stable phase after the pandemic, we selected Poland, Sweden, and Italy as emerging market promotion points earlier this year and are actively promoting local marketing. We will strive to convert this into actual demand for inbound tourism.”
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
