By Lee Hyo-sik
It is hard to book rooms these days at major hotels in Seoul and other popular tourist destinations in provincial areas, with Chinese and other foreign visitors taking up all available accommodation.
Department stores are flooded with non-Korean customers eager to snatch up luxury bags, cosmetics and other high-priced items, while high-end restaurants are crowded with foreigners seeking to taste a range of Korean dishes. Japanese and those from Southeast Asian countries have become the majority audience of K-pop groups’ concerts here.
It is almost impossible to tour old palaces and other famous tourist spots across the country without bumping into at least one group of foreign travelers.
To sum it up, Korea’s hospitality-related businesses are flourishing, thanks to the surging number of incoming visitors. But there is one overlooked sector that has outshined others; casinos.
The nation’s two major casino operators ― Grand Leisure Korea (GKL) and Paradise Group ― have seen the number of foreign customers soar by a double-digit figure each year.
GKL, the operator of Seven Luck Casino, is 51 percent owned by the Korea Tourism Organization. Korea’s largest foreigner-only casino-chain operates a casino at the Millennium Seoul Hilton at the foot of Mt. Nam in central Seoul, another in southern Seoul and a third in Busan.
Paradise Group runs five casinos in the country, one each at the Sheraton Grande Walkerhill Hotel in eastern Seoul, the Hyatt Regency Hotel near Incheon International Airport, the Paradise Hotel in Busan, the Jeju Grand Hotel and the Lotte Hotel Jeju. It also operates a casino in Kenya.
GKL has been enjoying brisk business this year, with record numbers of Japanese, Chinese and other tourists visiting its three outlets.
``More foreign tourists, particularly those from China, have come here to shop and see their favorite K-pop stars amid ``hallyu,’’ or the Korean wave, sweeping the globe. Overall, the domestic hospitality-related businesses are enjoying the new era of the Renaissance,’’ a GKL spokesman said.
GKL has played a crucial role in promoting Korea’s leisure and entertainment business, he said, stressing the company generates high-quality jobs and earns hard foreign currency.
``We do not expect the number of foreign tourists this year to increase at last year’s pace. But we will be able to double the number of visitors this year. Particularly, 37-percent more Chinese customers visited our outlets during the Chinese national holiday from Sept. 29 to Oct. 9, compared to 2010,’’ the spokesman said.
GLK has pledged to make more efforts to persuade the government to ease rules on the casino industry, improve its public image and promote casino as a new growth engine and cash cow.
Korea’s second-largest casino chain said its business is booming as more Chinese tourists visit its casinos, spending tens of millions of dollars.
``We had more Japanese customers than Chinese ones until 2005. But since 2006, more Chinese have come. In the first nine months of 2011, Chinese visitors accounted for 60 percent of our customers,’’ a Paradise Group spokesman said.
He said Paradise casinos help develop the local tourism industry and boost the economy by attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors from abroad. ``In particular, Chinese tourists who are famous for their love of gambling have become our main customer group. We will try to draw more increasingly-wealthier gamblers from the mainland.’’
Paradise Group was also selected early this month as the preferred bidder to build a large-scale casino near Incheon International Airport. Building a casino is part of a $570-million investment project to develop a 336,000 square-meter site near Incheon airport through 2016.
The envisioned comprehensive leisure and entertainment center will include a 500-room 5-star hotel, the biggest foreigners-only casino, a shopping mall, multipurpose housing and commercial buildings. By 2018, a business-class hotel with 250 rooms, a theater, concert halls, galleries, a convention center, spa facilities, and a business complex will also be established.
``When the project is completed, Paradise Group will become Korea’s leading operator of hospitality-related facilities,’’ the spokesman stressed.