SEOUL, Oct. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – Chinese travelers in their 20s and 30s have emerged as the key customers for South Korean duty-free stores as they are enticed by Korean pop culture and shopping experiences here, industry officials said Monday. Local duty-free shops in the past mostly generated revenue from middle-aged Chinese travelers who bought [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s government said Friday it is test operating a visa waiver program for foreign tourists entering the country via three selected cruise ships in the next six months. The Ministry of Justice said passengers of those cruise ships — Costa Serena, Sapphire Princess and Quantum of the Seas [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – Wednesday’s parliamentary audit brought to light the revelation that Korean travel agencies are offering holiday packages to countries with government-designated travel alerts, with some calling for government intervention to safeguard citizens. There are currently four levels of travel alerts issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Purple (areas needing [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed on a visa-waiver program that will allow people to travel to each other’s country without a visa for up to three months, the foreign ministry said Thursday. A memorandum of understanding on the visa waiver was signed at a meeting [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – An annual mass migration started in South Korea on Tuesday as people headed for their hometowns for one of the country’s major traditional holidays. Chuseok, the equivalent to Thanksgiving in the United States, falls on Thursday this year, with the official holiday period running from Wednesday to Sunday. Along [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 6 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean households’ overseas spending hit a record high in the first half of 2016 from a year earlier on increased outbound travel to neighboring countries, the central bank said Tuesday. South Korean households spent 13.6 trillion won (US$12 billion) overseas in the January-June period, up 10.7 percent from [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 1 (Korea Bizwire) – More South Koreans have planned overseas trips during this year’s Chuseok (harvest moon) holiday that’s extended to five days due to the following weekend, data from tour companies showed Thursday. HanaTour said departure reservations for the Sept. 13-15 holiday period were counted at 26,500 people as of Thursday, up [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of South Koreans going overseas for vacation jumped more than 40 percent on-year in July as more people flock to foreign destinations despite a prolonged slump in domestic demand, industry data showed Tuesday. Hana Tour Co., the nation’s leading tour agency, said the number of its clients [...]
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Korea Bizwire) — AARP Travel, a valuable resource for America’s 76 million baby boomers who spend over $120 billion annually in leisure travel, recently released a new study providing some great insight into how Americans experience air travel and announced new resources to help travelers reduce airport stress for AARP members and [...]
SEJONG, July 4 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of foreign cruise tourists visiting South Korea nearly doubled in the first six months of 2016, with the number expected to reach 1.5 million at the end of the year, the maritime ministry said Monday. Some 724,000 foreigners arrived in the country on cruise ships over the [...]