Director General Kim Ki-hong of the Tourism Bureau at the The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

 (photo: MOEL)

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) plans to develop quality tourism brands tailored to meet Chinese tourists’ needs and explore diverse regional tourism content in order to achieve the target of raising bilateral human exchanges to 10 million by 2016.  The year 2015 has been named “Visit China Year,” while 2016 has been designated “Visit Korea Year.” 

Director General Kim Ki-hong of the Tourism Bureau at the MCST said, “We’re making efforts toward the creation of a Chinese-friendly environment, deemed to be badly required in an effort to nurture the Chinese market.”

Last year saw 4.32 million Chinese inbound arrivals to emerge as the nation’s largest foreign inbound market. Chinese tourists are projected to grow to more than 5 million during this year. The following are excerpts from an interview between NewsWorld and Dir.-Gen. Kim of the MCST in which he spoke of his ministry’s policies designed to nurture the tourism industry as one of the nation’s future growth engines. 

Question: Will you explain major projects of Tourism Week and pending issues?

Answer:  Tourism Week is a joint project between the private and public sectors involving government ministries, local governments, related organizations, associations, and companies. First, the upcoming Tourism Week will offer tourism courses tailored to meet major targets, special tourism programs, and a variety of discounts. A website dedicated to Tourism Week is to open soon, and details of the project will be disclosed in early September. Second, efforts will be made to create an environment in which people go on vacation. Our ministry, in cooperation with the Ministry of Security and Public Administration (MSPA), the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF), the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), and the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL), plans to prod the private and public sectors to cash in on Tourism Week and to go on vacation. 

The Statue of Adm. Lee Sun-shin dominates the Gwangwha-mun area as 

lights on buildings in the area brighten up as the evening draws.

Q: Will you elaborate on sustainable steps to attract foreign inbound tourists?

A: Our ministry has diverse policies in place to achieve the 2014 goal of attracting 13 million foreign arrivals and advancing an era of 20 million foreign tourists.

Look at growth strategies of each market. We implement publicity and marketing activities to maintain sustainable growth in China, which emerges as Korea’s largest inbound tourist market, as well as to turn around the sagging Japanese inbound tourist market. Our ministry plans to employ scientific strategies, based on systematic demand projections with empirical data, to lure foreign tourists in order to tap such new markets as Southeast Asia and Russia. 

We see that a qualitative growth in attracting inbound tourists is as essential as a quantitative growth. We have to make Korea worthwhile to revisit by uprooting low-priced tours to Korea, improving tourism infrastructure and developing value-added tourist products. As part of efforts to tap the value-added market, we’re turning to nurturing hallyu tours using K-Pop performances and Korean food, medical tours, cruise tours, and sports tours as well as meeting, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE).

The MCST is working on policies to boost regional tourism industries to decentralize foreign inbound arrivals converging in Seoul and its surrounding areas. We’re seeking to publicize regional tourist resources in conjunction with such megaprojects as the 2014 Incheon Asian Games and the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. 

We strive to improve the capacity to accommodate foreign inbound arrivals by expanding lodging facilities, designing excellent shopping centers and eateries, educating tourism industry people about hospitality, and operating a tourism police force. 

Our ministry recently unveiled a new tourism brand dubbed “Imagine Your Korea” developed to boost the Korean foreign inbound market and reflect hallyu and other Korean tourism image changes, and implement publicity marketing strategies. We plan to conduct publicity marketing activities related to the new tourism brand through foreign media outlets and SNSs.

Q: Will you introduce us to your ministry’s policies to nurture Korea’s Chinese inbound market?

A: The number of Chinese tourists to Korea totaled 4.32 million during last year to become the nation’s largest foreign inbound market. Chinese tourists are projected to grow to more than 5 million during this year. 

We’re making efforts toward the creation of a Chinese-friendly environment, deemed to be badly required in an effort to nurture the Chinese market. The MCST, in cooperation with relevant ministries, is seeking to improve the issuance of Chinese tourist visas. Chinese-speaking interpreter-cum-guides will be posted in major tourist spots, mobile vehicle information centers are in operation, and the tour guidance telephone line 1330 is available.  

Our ministry plans to put surveillance into tourism agencies specializing in Chinese tourists and to monitor Korea-bound tour products to eliminate low-priced group tours in question. Korea and China continue to hold symposiums to beef government-to-government collaboration, share information, and make joint efforts to develop quality tourist products. Such an event took place in Seoul on May 29.

In an effort to cope with a rising number of individual Chinese tourists to Korea, we have been distributing individual tourist-oriented tour leaflets, building a smart tour guidance mechanism, and implementing other support systems, including the operation of an SNS reporters’ team consisting of Chinese students staying in Korea. 

Korean and Chinese leaders announced a plan to designate 2015 and 2016 as “Visit Korea and China Years” during talks on July 3. Our ministry plans to develop quality tourism brands tailored to meet Chinese tourists’ needs and explore diverse regional tourism content in order to achieve the target of raising bilateral human exchanges to 10 million by 2016. The year 2015 has been named “Visit China Year” while 2016 has been designated as “Visit Korea Year.”

Our ministry is devoting itself to capitalizing on the Incheon Asian Games, slated for Sept. 19-Oct. 4, to help Incheon and Korea get a jumpstart in the tourism industry. The MCST, in cooperation with relevant organizations, is carrying out projects to hold quality international events combining culture and tourism in order to lure more foreign inbound tourists.

We’re conducting publicity activities and familiarization tours targeting short-haul markets such as Japan, China, and Thailand while developing tour programs to watch Asian Games competitions. The Visit Korea foreigner’s website, operated by Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), posts must-see sightseeing spots in the Incheon area in five languages including English, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic. 

An interpreter-cum-secretary app will be made available free of charge, and mobile vehicle information guidance centers, inaugurated by Incheon police are in operation at major tourist spots as part of efforts to improve Incheon’s tourism carrying capacity and conditions in order to ease language barriers foreign tourists experience before and during the Asian Games period. 

A pavilion dedicated to promoting Korea’s culture and tourism will be installed in front of the main stadium of the Incheon Asian Games during the games period so that many foreigners will experience hallyu content. 

Q: Will you explain your ministry’s mid- and long-term strategies to nurture the tourism industry as one of Korea’s new growth engines?

A: The government aims at raising domestic tourism spending to 30 trillion won and achieving the goal of Korea’s rising to a top 15 country in terms of international tourism competition by 2017 by boosting the domestic tourism industry and ramping up its competitive edge. 

To this end, it plans to come up with mid- and long-term plans to promote the tourism industry by introducing Tourism Week, designate the “Tourism City of the Year,” and take other steps to improve tourism conditions; building a foundation for the creation of creative tourism for nurturing “creative tourism firms,” developing diverse rural and ecosystem tourism resources on top of improved traffic systems, and diversifying markets to China, Russia, and Southeast Asia. 

We’re doing our utmost to develop the tourism industry as Korea’s representative service industry in an era of the creative economy by seamlessly implementing steps to nurture tourism services sectors, approved by the 6th Meeting of the Trade Investment Promotion Committee recently.