Kang Seung-woo is the Business Desk editor at The Korea Times. Prior to this position, he covered politics, national affairs, finance and sports.
COEX Aquarium aims to become must-visit attraction for foreigners
The COEX Aquarium shows off a variety of marine creatures, including sharks. / Courtesy of COEX Aquarium
By Kang Seung-woo
By Kang Seung-woo
When Yang Su-yong, a career-long specialist in the hospitality sector, took the helm of COEX Aquarium in June last year, his new industry was a “red ocean,” where hard-fought competitions were unavoidable to lure more people from the nation's aging population.
COEX Aquarium CEO Yang Su-yong
In order to escape the “bloody” market, the 54-year-old came up with the idea of turning his attention to the growing number of foreign nationals visiting Korea.
“While exploring ways to rebound the firm's declining revenue, I came up with the idea of attracting foreign tourists coming to Korea,” the CEO said in an interview with The Korea Times.
According to the government, more than 14 million foreigners visited Korea this year as of November.
“To this end, I instructed staff to place English first on every signboard in the aquarium. Also, various performances were held in English and employees at each booth and the ticket office were trained to speak English,” he said.
“Keeping in mind that although our facility is located in Seoul, our focus is on drawing international visitors, I made efforts to put the concept above more than anything else.”
The foreign-focused policy seems to have started paying off, based on its operational metrics for this year.
“This year's sales rose by 120 percent from last year and it means those of rivals decreased during the same period because the market volume remains unchanged or even shrinks due to a gradual population decline,” the CEO said.
“In particular, the number of foreign visitors jumped by an unprecedented 200 percent year-on-year as of Dec. 19.”
Yang added that the number is projected to reach 200,000 by the end of the year.
In addition, the facility ranked 51st in the list of Seoul's top tourist sites by U.S.-based travel website TripAdvisor. The rankings are based on reviews by those visitors to those attractions.
“It has extra significance, given that few commercial facilities outranked us in the over-800 attraction list,” Yang said.
Such recognition is backed up by what it provides to foreign visitors, establishing itself as a must-visit spot.
“We offer our brochures in Arabic and Russian as well as English, Japanese and Chinese, while a Spanish version is in the pipeline,” Yang said.
“In addition, through our alignment with the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO), those who have its Discover Seoul Pass are admitted free.”
The Discover Seoul Pass is a travel pass that provides a range of benefits for foreign visitors, such as free admission to popular tourist attractions in Seoul.
The aquarium formed a new partnership recently with the STO to offer free hanbok rental. Hanbok is a traditional Korean dress and the rental service is currently catching on among foreign tourists.
“Earlier this year, we had a trial run of renting hanbok for free and found foreigners really loved it. So, we have decided to launch the service soon,” he said.
In Seoul, there are three aquariums, the other two being Lotte World Aquarium and Hanwha's Aqua Planet 63. COEX Aquarium is owned by KDB Infrastructure Investments Asset Management.
However, Yang said it still has extra selling points.
“As we are located in the heart of the Gangnam area, we have great accessibility,” he said.
According to him, it is accessible easily via public transport, with two subway lines ― Lines 2 and 9 ― stopping nearby and various bus services available.
“Plus, we have 1,200-year-old Bongeun Temple just across the street from the state-of-the-art convention center COEX, while there is a K-pop haven, SMTown Coex Artium, here,” he added.
The aquarium itself has something to boast, as well.
“The COEX Aquarium is nicknamed kingdom of sharks thanks to a range of the marine species,” the CEO said, adding that they are from 1.2 meters to 3 meters in length.
He said many of the sharks have been here since the aquarium opened in 2000, so now it has a variety of large creatures, compared with those raised in rival facilities.
“For example, others also have sand tiger sharks, but none of them are as large as ours. I guarantee you that our inventory of sharks does not suffer by comparison with those of any international aquariums,” Yang said. “They are world-class.”
On the back of the winning notes and business plans, COEX Aquarium has set its sights on drawing at least 400,000 foreign visitors in the upcoming year.
“Sales strategy does not bear fruit overnight and I am telling you up to 90 percent of customers will be foreigners in two or three years if we continue as planned,” he said.
“With more than 10 million people coming to Korea every year, my goal is to attract 5 percent of the annual number of visitors to our facility.”