Foreigners at Myeong-dong, international tourists’ top destination in Seoul, on April 30, 2024 (By Bum-June Kim)
South Korean retailers and hotels are enjoying a boom thanks to surging tourists at home and abroad during the holidays in early May across North Asia as more than 180,000 foreigners are expected to visit the country.
Japan is already in the Golden Week holiday this week, while China’s five-day Labor Day holiday starts on Wednesday. South Korea has a long weekend this week with a substitute public holiday on May 6.
About 100,000 Japanese tourists and 80,000 Chinese visitors are predicted to come to South Korea, respectively, from April 27 to May 6, according to the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Tuesday.
Hotels and casinos are key beneficiaries of the boom. Hotels in Jeju island, South Korea’s top resort, have already been fully booked with Grand Hyatt Jeju reporting reservations of 11,890 rooms from April 27 to May 5, the largest since its opening.
“It is the best boom since COVID-19. It looks like another boom of Chinese tourists is coming,” said an official at a Jeju hotel.
Lotte Hotel Seoul, located in foreign tourists’ must-visit place Myeong-dong, enjoyed reservation rates of more than 80% during the period, although room rates were higher by up to 120,000 won ($86.8) per night than usual.
Seoul was among the top five travel destinations along with Tokyo, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Taipei during the holidays in early May, according to Trip.com Group, one of the world’s largest online travel agencies headquartered in Singapore.
“Chinese tourists kept coming with flights between China and Korea sold out during the holidays,” said a source in the South Korean tourism industry. “That compared with the Chinese New Year holiday earlier this year when the industry failed to enjoy a boom because it was too early to feel the impact of China’s measure to lift the restriction on group tourists (to South Korea).”
CASINOS
Yeongjong Island, near South Korea’s main gateway Incheon International Airport, also enjoyed the growing number of Chinese and Japanese tourists as the island is home to casinos for foreigners.
Paradise City, a resort operated by a major casino operator Paradise Co., logged room reservation rates of more than 90% during this week with half of them foreigners.
“Many casino big figures from Japan are coming,” said a Paradise City official. “Suite rooms and pool villas that cost 10 million won-20 million won per night are fully booked by foreigners.”
Rooms of Mohegan Inspire, which has recently opened a casino on the island, were also sold out.
Casino at Mohegan Inspire in Yeongjong Island (File photo, courtesy of News1)
DEPARTMENT STORES, DUTY-FREE SHOPS
Retailers aimed to attract foreign tourists with various promotions.
Lotte Department Store, South Korea’s largest shopping mall operator, held a festival from April 27 when Japan’s Golde Week started around its main branch in Myeong-dong. That doubled foreigners’ credit card payments in the latest one week at the branch from a year earlier.
Sales to foreigners at the Hyundai Seoul, a must-visit for young foreigners, and Shinsegae Inc.’s department main store surged by 785.4% and 309%, respectively during the period.
Duty-free shops, which had been struggling to recover due to a lack of Chinese tourists, launched promotions to lure international visitors.
Lotte Duty Free is offering various benefits to individual foreign tourists at offline stores until May 12, for example. The leading South Korean duty-free shop operator provides free gifts according to spending and its digital payment system LDF Pay worth 10,000 won, which can be used only for purchases of South Korean beauty and fashion products, for each category. It also supports cosmetics shoppers with benefits of as much as 70,000 won.
SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY?
The South Korean tourism industry is keeping an eye on whether the boom is sustainable since tourists from China and Japan are key to the sector’s recovery.
The number of visitors from China totaled 1 million in the first quarter, more than seven times a year ago, while the number of Japanese tourists nearly doubled to 665,893, according to the Korea Tourism Organization. They were still only 76.1% and 83.8%, respectively, of the numbers in 2019 before the outbreak of COVID-19.
Chinese and Japanese tourists are expected to be core factors for the South Korean government’s goal of attracting 20 million tourists from other countries, analysts said. Visitors from the neighbors accounted for 53% of total tourists in 2019.
“Many tourists from new markets such as Southeast Asia and the Americas are coming, but it is more important to recover the number of visitors from China and Japan,” another tourism industry official said.
By Sun A Lee
suna@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.
