ed Keep the Chinese coming

During the Lunar New Year holiday, large department stores in downtown Seoul were swarming with Chinese tourists. Up to 126,000 Chinese people, up 30 percent from last year, were estimated to visit Korea during Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, which will continue through Tuesday, tourism officials say.

South Korea is the foremost destination of Chinese tourists. In a recent poll of 5 million Chinese tourists who planned to travel abroad in this Spring Festival season, 15.6 percent chose Korea, followed by Thailand (13.9 percent), Japan (8.7 percent) and Australia (4.4 percent). Geographical proximity, convenient and competitive shopping, and the Korean wave or hallyu seem to have combined to lure Chinese tourists.

Nothing could be more welcome for the nation’s economy, hit by sluggish domestic consumption with its manufacturing industry faltering in the face of strong challenges from both developing and developed rivals.

In 2014, 6.13 million Chinese people visited this country, accounting for 43 percent of the total foreign tourists, and spent about 10 trillion won here, or 56 percent of the nation’s tourism revenue, while causing employment of 340,000 people.

There are also less welcome statistics, however. According to Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, out of the 16 regions from which tourists visited Korea, the satisfaction of Chinese people stood at 14th place and those who wanted to revisit here also remained at the same ranking. It is not hard to know possible reasons: cheap food and lodging, forced shopping, abusive language, and rip-off taxi charges, all of which are typical in low-priced package tours.

This also explains why Chinese visitors to Korea are mostly shorter-staying, low-spending tourists.

And it bodes ill for the long-term prospect of the nation’s tourism industry, and other related services industries, at a time when almost all major tourism powers, including America, Britain and Japan, are going all out to cut the larger slice out of the market named Chinese international travelers, which will only grow bigger as an estimated 500 million Chinese middle-class people want to see more of the world.

At stake is how to shift from quantity to quality by attracting an increasing number of upper middle-class Chinese tourists. The culture and tourism ministry can start by rectifying current problems, such as eliminating forced-march shopping excursions led by ill-paid guides, kicking out overcharging drivers, and installing more signboards in Mandarin. More positively, the ministry will have to develop higher value-added tour products, providing opportunities to experience the best Korean food as served in the famous TV drama, "A Jewel in the Palace,” or medical tourism, including cosmetic surgery for visitors who want to look like hallyu movie stars, minus substandard brokers and unqualified surgeons, and promoting MICE (Meeting, Incentives, Convention and Exhibition) industries.

Officials want to increase the number of Chinese visitors to 10 million by 2018 when, coincidentally or not, the focus of Korea’s industrial structure is expected to shift from manufacturing to services. One yardstick of success in such a shift will be whether Korea can satisfactorily cater to various types of Chinese tourists.