Welcom mat for Chinese tourists

By James Rooney

Ten years ago, Korea had a modest tourism industry that brought visitors from Japan to play golf in Cheju-do and go shopping in Myeong-dong.

With the intention to properly globalize Korea in the aftermath of the "IMF Crisis", there were aspirations to promote Korea overseas and to attract a broader base of tourists, particularly from the United States and Europe.

Distinctive branding was attempted at both the national level, under the slogan "Dynamic Korea," among others, and at the city level with "Seoul, Heart of Asia" and "Hi Seoul" being among the more memorable attempts.

A variety of marketing campaigns were launched in international markets. And ambitious tourism projects were proposed, mostly on the premise that "if you build it they will come", but with little real grounding in proper market analysis and solid business projections, and with an unrealistic view of capital injection.

In addition, these tourism-building efforts suffered from a number of weaknesses.

Awareness and knowledge of Korea in faraway places like Europe and America was extremely limited, and had often been primarily shaped by negative images from the Korean War (1950-53), the TV program M.A.S.H., street rioting by rebellious students and labor unions, and the constant dramas created by North Korea.

Accurate images of a peaceful, well-organized, advanced and modern country with excellent products, gracious service, outstanding safety, and a fascinating history were almost non-existent.

And to expect large numbers of tourists to travel 12 to 16 hours by plane from Europe or America is unrealistic, even in today's jet-setting world.

The marketing campaigns that were launched to overcome these weaknesses were well-intentioned, but generally lacked impact, coherency, consistency and continuity.

The mission became unclear, the messages became garbled, and the positive images continued to get lost amidst confusing reports of conflicts with trade partners, domestic political disturbances, and candlelight vigils that turned into street riots.

And of course there was always North Korea; ready at any time to create a new drama if things started to seem too quiet. And yet in the middle of all of this, Korea proved to be the most gracious host for visitors of the 2002 FIFA World Cup; the irony of this success was that most of the faraway viewers assumed that Korea was just another part of Japan, and that Samsung and Hyundai were yet more successful Japanese conglomerates entering the world stage.

However, while all of these deliberate efforts were largely ineffective, a number of fortunate events started to create a new wave of tourism into Korea in spite of the weaknesses.

First, the Korean Wave or Hallyu started to sweep East Asia, with the TV soap drama "Winter Sonata" becoming enormously popular in neighboring countries including Japan, Hong Kong, and China, and it was followed by other successful soap operas and historical dramas to build a steady drumbeat of Korean cultural exposure in nearby markets.

These audiences became fascinated by the personality and culture of their little neighbor, and the increasing numbers of modern and historical dramas introduced overseas started to do for Korea what FDI-focused economic marketing had failed to do.

And Korean pop culture also attracted positive attention in the same markets, adding another dimension to the newly-emerging images of Korea.

Tourists started to arrive in Korea to visit the sites that had featured in the dramas, to catch a glimpse of their favorite actors and pop stars, and to get more direct exposure to this new manifestation of Korean culture.

But in the beginning, the real impact of this newfound popularity was muted by strict visa restrictions and other difficulties faced by the potentially most numerous of these aspiring tourists, the newly-emerging travelers from mainland China.

The reality of the future is that there are now at least 500 million middle-class Chinese rapidly emerging out of a total population that now exceeds 1.3 billion. This five hundred million is more than the entire population of North America - with the United States, Canada and Mexico combined.

It is also more than the entire population of the European Economic Union (EU), and nearly as big as the aggregate 600 million population of Europe up to the borders with Russia and Turkey.

These middle-class Chinese are workers who have migrated to the cities to get new and increasingly skilled jobs, and have started to earn steady salaries and own or rent apartments. Maybe they also have a car.

But most certainly, they like to take vacations. Typically there are three major holidays in China in the course of the calendar year - the Chinese New Year holiday, the May Day Festival, and the equivalent of the Korean Thanksgiving holiday, or Chuseok.

In Korea we are lucky to enjoy two or three days off work for these holidays. But in China, for many reasons including the huge logistical challenges of transporting literally hundreds of millions of people in a limited period of time, these holidays are at least a week long, and are often individually extended to two or even three weeks.

The Chinese love to take vacations, and we can expect that they will be the world's best tourists - at least in economic terms, measured by the amount they spend, how long they stay, the luxury that they seek, and the entertainment and distractions that they will enjoy.

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