SEOUL, Feb. 8 (Korea Bizwire) – The average growth rate of outgoing tourism from South Korea has far outpaced that of domestic tourism, data showed Wednesday. The number of Koreans who traveled abroad rose by an average annual growth rate of 10.4 percent to 19 million in 2015, from 12 million in 2011, the Ministry [...]
BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Korea Bizwire) – An international cruise ship operator has cut the number of its services linking China directly with South Korea, a move deemed to be in line with Beijing’s retaliatory steps against Seoul’s planned installment of a U.S. anti-missile defense system, industry sources said Tuesday. According to the sources, MSC, which [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 30 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s air passenger traffic reached a new high in 2016 on a sharp increase in international passengers to and from the country amid expanded services of low-cost carriers (LCCs), the transportation ministry said Monday. Air passenger traffic came in at 103.9 million last year, breaching the 100 million mark [...]
INCHEON, Jan. 25 (Korea Bizwire) – This year’s Korean Lunar New Year falls on January 28. Although the official holiday begins on Friday for a four-day weekend until Monday next week, Incheon International Airport, South Korea’s main air travel hub, is already booming with departing travelers. The airport expects roughly 416,700 individuals to depart from [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 24 (Korea Bizwire) – The growth rate of Chinese tourists arriving in South Korea rebounded in December after falls for five months, data showed Tuesday, despite diplomatic tensions between the two neighbors over Seoul’s plan to deploy an advanced U.S. missile defense system. The data compiled by the Korea Tourism Organization showed that [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]