Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light, though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they, do not go gentle into that good night.
Seoul overhauls flagship tourism portal for international visitors
VisitSeoul's new user interface / Captured from visitseoul.net
By Jhoo Dong-chan
Navigating a foreign metropolis often requires juggling a dozen smartphone apps: one for transit, another for local weather and a handful more for restaurant reviews and map directions. Now, Korea’s capital is moving to replace that digital sprawl with a single, consolidated hub for international visitors.
The Seoul Tourism Organization announced Tuesday a sweeping overhaul of the user interface for VisitSeoul, the city’s official multilingual tourism portal. Designed to serve as a one-stop digital companion, the updated site integrates real-time environmental alerts, localized transit routes and streamlined social sharing directly into its destination pages.
The portal, which clocked over 8 million visits last year across seven languages — including English, Japanese, Chinese and Russian — was redesigned in direct response to user feedback. Previously, travelers looking up iconic landmarks like Gyeongbok Palace or N Seoul Tower had to jump between external platforms to check local conditions or plot out train connections.
Under the new interface, every location page serves as a live dashboard. Beyond baseline opening hours and entrance fees, users now see real-time updates on ambient temperature, air quality indexes and fine dust levels. During extreme weather events — such as summer heat waves or heavy winter snowfall — the platform automatically pushes safety advisories directly onto the page, eliminating the need to cross-check local emergency alerts.
Transit navigation has also been boiled down to a single click.
By tapping a new Public Transport Directions icon, a user's chosen destination automatically loads onto a route planner, generating step-by-step subway and bus instructions from their current location. The portal has also expanded its social integration, adding platforms widely used across Asia, such as Line and Weibo, alongside direct device-to-device sharing functions.
Looking ahead, the city plans to roll out second-phase updates later this year targeting high-traffic transit guides and pretrip planning hubs. As Korea welcomes a surge of international arrivals — surpassing 10 million foreign visitors in the first half of the year alone — city officials hope the upgraded platform will keep pace with changing travel habits.
“In an era where how people search for information is rapidly shifting, VisitSeoul continues to deliver accurate, trusted guidance,” said Kim Jeong-hyun, head of digital marketing at the Seoul Tourism Organization. “We aim to solidify its role as the definitive platform for every traveler exploring Seoul.”
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.