Koreans maximum traveling community in the world, but skip India
India and Korea both have failed to attract tourists from each other’s soil as Indian tourists too are significantly big number traveling abroad every year at 23.9 million in 2017, little less than Korea’s figure of 26.4 million in the corresponding year.
New Delhi. The hard taskmaster South Koreans also love to travel and hence are the maximum traveling community in the world.
Last year in 2018, about 28.6 million South Koreans, more than half the country’s population traveled to various destinations of the world, a report by Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) in India has revealed.
Virtually every citizen of South Korea, barring children and elderlies who count for about 50% of the population, travels abroad annually.
However, India and Korea both have failed to attract tourists from each other’s soil as Indian tourists too are significantly big number traveling abroad every year at 23.9 million in 2017, little less than Korea’s figure of 26.4 million in the corresponding year.
Ironically, Korea and India don’t figure in each other’s top 10 traveling countries list too.
For Korea, India is ranked 16 amongst all the nations that visit South Korea and for India, South Korea is ranked 17, said the KTO report.
Barely 140 thousand Koreans s traveled to India last year.
Also, the per capita expenditure of US$ 1022 on the global travel by the Koreans happens to be one of the highest in the world as they spent US$ 27billion in 2017 for this, said Sandeep Dutta, the marketing manager, KTO in India during a presentation at KCCI, New Delhi in March last.
However, Koreans prefer Asia over other destinations like Europe and travel to Asian countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos for Bhudhism related tourism but not much to India despite it being the birthplace of Bhudhism, says a KTO report.
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India has Buddhist circuit locations like Bodhgaya, Rajgir, Sarnath, Shravasth, and Kushinagar are both in Utter Pradesh (UP) and Bihar. But any itinerary has to start from either Varanasi or Lucknow in UP. Typical Korean itinerary happens to be Golden Triangle Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur.
As per the data furnished by KTO in India, South Korea has witnessed dramatic outbound travel growth of 18% percent in last 5 years, and contrary to inbound, the outbound numbers have not been impacted by any geopolitical reasons.
The outbound travel by Koreans grew steadily from 13.7 million in the year 2013 to 26.4 million in 2017 and 28.6 million in 2018.
The Korean inbound foreign tourist arrival growth has been impacted by geopolitical situations such as MERS Virus outbreak in 2015 and the North Korea issue in 2017. The country registered inbound tourist traffic of 13.2 million in 2015, 17.2 million in 2016, 13.3 million in 2017 and 15.3 million in 2018.
Indians, on the other hand, prefer to travel to Europe instead and visit negligible numbers at 110 thousand to Korea annually, and that too majorly for the business purpose, not for leisure.
Indians prefer Europe over Korea as by doing so they can travel to many other countries of Europe but it’s not the same case when they travel to South Korea which is a cluster of Islands and not connected to other countries by land.
According to the KTO report, India’s current average growth is at 8.5 %.
According to the UNWTO research, India’s outbound tourism traffic will cross 50 million by 2020 making is one of the main potential markets for Korean tourism.
Suggestions to increase the footfall of Korean travelers to India:
KTO India has, however, some suggestions to improve Korean traffic to India.
It said that India should improve infrastructure such as hotels and Korean food restaurants in Bhudhits circuits. Barring Delhi and NCR towns like Gurgaon and very few other metros of India have Korean restaurants.
It is also suggested that state-owned Air India increase its flights between Delhi and Seoul from 3 times a week to 5 times. India tourism & Indian travel companies must participate in major Korean outbound travel marts like International Travel Fair (ITF) happening in June every year and also have roadshows in Seoul, Daegu, and Busan.
KTO has also suggested FAM tour for top 10-20 Korean outbound travel companies for north India and Buddhist circuit.
It has suggested that India should create new tourism products such as Golden temple +Lucknow, Varanasi +Khajuraho add on package and Bhudhist circuit program.
The initiatives by Indian-Korean government so far:
In their bid to improve tourism between the two countries, India has started granting visa on arrival facility to South Korean tourists in 2018.
An MOU was signed between the two countries to increase tourism promotion in 2018. South Korea first lady was invited to India as chief guest during Diwali in Ayodhya in November last year.
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