International-hit K-Drama and Online Coupons Attract More Tourists to Korea

The result showed the number of visitors to “Petit France,” the filming location for the TV show, has skyrocketed over the months. (image: kimgon/ Pixabay)

SEOUL, June 19 (Korea Bizwire) – A study suggested that the international success of a couple of Korean TV series, such as “My Love from the Star,” has attracted more and more individual tourists to Korea.

Visit Korea Committee (www.vkc.or.kr) revealed on June 17 its analysis results of online discount coupon download statistics during the past five months (from January to May) by foreigners on its official website. The result showed the number of visitors to “Petit France,” the filming location for the TV show, has skyrocketed over the months.

VKC, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Korean tourism industry, runs a couple of tourism-related programs aimed at attracting international tourists. Currently, VKC runs “Must-See Routes,”  a program where it carefully selects and introduces little known but excellent and elegant tourism resources of each region. And the committee holds the Korea Grand Sale, Discount Coupon Service and One-More-Night Promotion, which are all developed under the theme of “shopping” being the newly emerging tourism item.

And its online discount coupon program is part of its tourism promotional events centered around ”shopping” theme — taking aim at foreign tourists who are keen to visit sites aired on popular K-dramas. If you are among those anxious to look around such famous “TV sites” firsthand and go shopping at the same time, these discount coupons — only available for foreign tourists — are worth downloading. And through the coupon downloads figures, the organization cound infer that popular K-dramas have played a significant role in attracting more and more foreign tourists into Korea.

According to the committee, 900 coupons were downloaded on January, which is before the K-drama series was aired, whereas in March, after the end of the show, download numbers peaked over 3,000.

(graphic: Kobizmedia/ Korea Bizwire)

The filming site and famous tourist attraction has kept its related online discount coupon download numbers over 3,000 ever since and is currently ranked first in the download numbers among all of tourist attractions where discounts were offered. Especially, whopping 56 percent of the download turned out to be from Chinese-speaking nations.

The analysis suggested that such results are in line with the growing trend of Chinese-speaking tourists to Korea. The download numbers from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan all took a significant leap simultaneously with the surge in the number of visitors from these countries over the five months.

On the other hand, the download numbers from Japan dropped over the same period, as well as the number of visitors from the nation concurrently. The most 70 percent of the downloaded coupons were for beauty products, 12 percent of them were for dining, and 9 percent were entertainment.

An official at the committee said, “The number of individual tourists to Korea has been steadily increasing and the online discount coupons act as an incentive for the tourists to choose Korea over other countries and as a catalyst in boosting the shopping tourism. We ask for more companies to join us to offer more coupons so that the tourists will enjoy wide options of discounts and shopping in Korea.”

As of now, a total of 35 companies and 97 businesses offer discount coupons and other benefits to the visitors of Korea on the website. 

Written by J. H. Kim (jhkim@koreabizwire.com)

Lifestyle (Follow us @Lifestylenews_Korea)