KTO Spices Up Tourism
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Korea lacks natural or historic tour resources appealing to foreign tourists. That's why it needs to develop cultural or unique tour products to attain its goal of making tourism a new growth engine for the country.
Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), marking its 46th anniversary Thursday, has devoted itself to promoting the tour industry. It is now putting a greater focus on unearthing competitive cultural contents and exploring medical tour options to develop them into attractive tour programs.
Its efforts to develop new tour products are bearing fruit. The number of foreign visitors to Korea reached 2.75 million during the five months to May, growing more than 10 percent from a year earlier. The tour agency's tour promotion is seen as having brought 2.3 million visitors out of 6.4 million incoming tourists in total in 2007, according to the Tourism Sciences Society of Korea.
Performance
Festivals involving performances are gaining popularity, a fact that KTO has paid attention to attract visitors to such thigns as B-boy dance and percussion performance ``Nanta'' (Cookin').
Those performances, demolishing language barriers, have already been recognized at international showcases.
Setting up a ``performance tourism marketing'' strategy in 2006, KTO has held events and promotions.
In ``2007 Korea in Motion, Daegu'' last November, 12 non-verbal performances including ``Jump,'' ``Ballerina Who Loves a B-Boy,'' and ``Marionette'' were presented.
In a B-boy competition ``R-16 Korea, Sparkling 2007'' in May last year, 16 teams from 14 countries showed their dynamic moves. This year's competition, ``R-16 Korea, Sparkling, Gyeonggi 2008,'' drew 52 teams for the preliminary, the largest number in B-boy competition history.
KTO brought 7,000 foreign travelers to Korea by developing tour programs that included the two events. Five performances presented in the Korea in Motion were exported. This year's B-boy competition was aired live by broadcasters from 60 countries.
The tourism body recently held a tourism road show in Thailand and showcased non-verbal martial arts comedy ``Jump.'' Six Thai travel agencies signed an MOU with KTO to bring 5,000 tourists to Korea this year with travel packages that include the performance.
``We hope foreign visitors can enjoy not only well-known tourist attractions like Gyeongbok Palace and Insa-dong, but also Korea's unique cultural performances,'' a KTO official said.
Medical Tourism
Korea's medical skills in some fields, such as plastic surgery, dentistry and medical checkup, have been recognized for the high quality. The government is relaxing rules and other administrative steps to help boost the burgeoning industry. Well aware of the great potential, KTO is also actively engaging itself in programs to boost medical tourism, taking advantage of its overseas offices.
The tour organization has held promotions for Korean residents in the United States and journalists in other countries.
In May last year, KTO introduced Korea's medical programs to Koreans and travel agencies in Los Angeles. Last month, it held the promotion again, together with six hospitals.
Since last September, the tourism body has helped foreign journalists, including those from China, Japan, Canada, Dubai and Kazakhstan, experience medical programs here. It is now preparing for the International Medical Travel Conference, which will open in Seoul in November.
KTO is also making efforts to set up a tourism infrastructure and upgrade services. It developed a medium- and low-priced hotel chain brand ``Benikea'' to provide economic rates and quality services. The tour agency also operates a 24-hour information line 1330 in English, Chinese and Japanese.
KTO aims to attract as many as 7 million visitors this year and reap $6.2 billion in tour revenue.