Worried over abysmally low Indian tourists count, Korea plans to ride K-Wave (Hallyu) to promote tourism

SEOUL: Even though the number of foreign tourists visiting South Korea from across the world continues to witness upward trend, the tally of Indians visiting Korea continues to go down. In 2016, the number of Indian tourists to Korea was at its peak at 195,000, and the number did not increase after that. In deep contrast, the total number of foreign tourists visiting Korea in the same year was a whopping 17 million.  It amply shows that the people in India do not regard Korea as a major tourist destination.

According to Korea’s tourism promotional arm Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), the number of foreign visitors to South Korea has increased rapidly in recent years, rising from 13 million in 2017 to 15 million in 2018 and more than 17 million in 2019. Experts believe that the increase is largely attributed to the Hallyu (Korean Wave) craze. In particular, the number of tourists from Asian countries is on the rise, including Chinese group tours as well as those coming from Indonesia and Thailand.

With this worrying trend in mind, the KTO has some plans for this most populous country in the world.

LEE Young-geun, Executive Director, International Marketing Department, KTO told Asian Community News Network, “This year we have organised a road show by the end of August in India in New Delhi. We know that Korean culture including K-Pop, K-Movies, K-Dramas, are very popular in India. We will use that content to promote tourism as promotional material and make Korea as a tourist destination. We stand a good chance because of the popularity of K-culture in India.” 

The senior KTO official said that there were many business travellers from India, but regular tourists were not that good in number.  “So our New Delhi office and head office of KTO will be working together to promote Korea in India. But I don’t know why Indian tourists prefer Europe and other countries and do not visit Korea. They visit countries in Europe more than Korea and Japan. Korea as a tourism market for India is very weak.”

The travel situation from Korea to India also is not very encouraging as the number of Korean travellers to India was registered abysmally low at 150,000 only in 2018. Most of them travelled to New Delhi and that’s also for business purposes, and not for tourism.

While reasoning the low number LEE Young-geun, Executive Director, International Marketing Department, KTO said that it was also because of the low number of flights as compared to other countries between Seoul and Delhi, and tickets also were very expensive.

“We have asked the airline companies to increase the number of seats by adding more flights between the two countries. But it seems like a side effect of the Covid 19 pandemic that the number flight seats have remained limited.”

As of now, the airline companies operating flights between the two countries majorly include Koreas Airlines, Asiana Airlines, and Air India.

KTO New Delhi’s Brand promotion and PR activities in India include Product Training, Product Development & Co-Marketing with outbound tour operators, Familiarization Trips for travel industry and media personnel, Participation in major B2B and B2C exhibition and events, Association with travel industry and related organizations, Information dissemination through roadshows, seminars and workshops, Incentive support for MICE, Industrial and Educational tourism, and Encouraging film tourism to South Korea.