SEOUL, Jan. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – The keyword for the Korea Tourism Organization’s 2017 business plan is “diversification.” In an official announcement Monday, the KTO said it will be targeting tourists from Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas to stray away from its high dependency on Chinese tourists, while offering more tourism content outside of [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean Internet giant Naver announced Wednesday the launch of ConA (Context Recognition AI), an artificial intelligence platform that automatically recommends travel destinations overseas. According to Naver, ConA uses deep learning technology and makes use of big data from online tour sites or restaurant information to come up with [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 6 (Korea Bizwire) – The government will work to develop what it called tailor-made tour programs that will meet the various tastes of tourists from China and other countries, the tourism ministry said Friday. The new programs to be developed will target individual tourists or small groups, according to the Ministry of Culture, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – Local tour agency Cosmojin Tour announced Tuesday the top five tourism trends in 2016 for inbound travelers. According to Cosmojin, this year was marked by an increasing number of individual tourists, instead of group tours, and company officials said the number of inquiries for the tours rose by 30 [...]
INCHEON, Dec. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced Tuesday a new development plan for the Port of Incheon, which involves investment of 9 trillion won ($7.45 billion) to transform the port city into a global center for logistics and marine tourism. Incheon’s port currently ranks fourth in South Korea in [...]
BUSAN, Dec. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – Over the past few years, Busan, Korea’s second most populous city, has grown increasingly popular as a cruise destination. The number of tourists arriving on cruise ships, which topped 50,000 in 2011, began to increase rapidly beginning in 2012, jumping to 113,000 in 2013, and then doubling again to [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign tourists arrivals in South Korea are expected to surpass a record high of 17 million people this year on the back of a sharp increase in Chinese tourists, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Monday. The number of foreign tourists to South Korea fell 6.8 percent [...]
BEIJING, Dec. 16 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea and China have wrapped up their “Visit Korea Year 2016″ campaign in Beijing in a ceremony overshadowed by a diplomatic feud over Seoul’s missile shield plan. South Korean Minister of the Culture, Sports and Tourism Cho Yoon-sun and China National Tourism Administration Chairman Li Jinzao presided over [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 9 (Korea Bizwire) – Operating a duty-free store is a highly lucrative venture, and the few five-year licenses granted by the government are usually hotly contested. However, authorities have finally decided to raise the special commission imposed on duty-free store operators, which has been frequently criticized for being unusually low, by up to [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 6 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of foreigners who visited South Korea this year surpassed 16 million in early December thanks to the rising influx of travelers from Asian nations, the state-run tourism agency said Tuesday. A total of 15.9 million foreigners visited the nation in the January-November period, up 31.3 percent from [...]