Tourism industry stands at start line

Medical tourism has great growth potential

By Yun Suh-young

Tourism started becoming a popular concept in Korea in the late 1980s when its economic size reached a decent level. Before the 1980s, tourism had a negative meaning as it was difficult just to make a living.

As people’s overall standard of living improved thanks to the growing economy, people started going abroad. Initially, Korean tourists, new to the global environment, behaved indecently and created embarrassing situations.

Since the late 1990s, however, such situations have reduced due to the explosive amount of people experiencing foreign culture and learning global etiquette.

Now, from a country that sent outbound tourists, Korea has become a major tourism destination.

It is preparing to meet 11 million inbound visitors by the end of this year. The tourism industry, however, has a long way to go. It faces challenges and needs improvement in both its hardware and software.

Right now, it’s just at the starting line.

Hardware ― infrastructure

When asked where the nation’s tourism industry stands, Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) CEO Lee Charm said, “We’re ‘at the beginning.’”

Korea isn’t yet equipped with sufficient infrastructure.

“Basically, hardware comes first and on top of it comes software. You need places for people to sleep so you need hardware as a basic condition,” Lee said during an interview with The Korea Times.

“But we’re underdeveloped in terms of tourism infrastructure. We don’t have enough hotel rooms. This is a huge problem. All other major cities have more hotel rooms than Seoul. If 80 percent of tourists want to spend their time in Seoul, only 40 percent get to sleep there. Others have to go to Suwon, Pyeongtaek, or Cheonan. That’s a major handicap because we can’t create hotel rooms overnight.”

There are only 28,046 hotel rooms available in the capital while there is demand for 36,379. Considering that the number of foreign tourists increased by nearly 20 percent this year compared to last, Seoul will need 31,172 more hotel rooms by 2015 to accommodate more visitors.

“Also, we don’t have enough convention and exhibition facilities. All of the convention center spaces in Korea combined is about half the size of those in Europe,” he said. “We have 250,000 square meters of convention space but a city like Hanover in Germany with 200,000 inhabitants has 400,000 square meters of convention space. That shows how underdeveloped our infrastructure is. Korea is a leading information technology country but we don’t have one single world level exhibition or convention,” he added.

In terms of service, however, Korea’s convention industry is top-notch, experts say.

“I have been to dozens of conventions abroad but I have not found any other country that runs them better than Korea. Foreign participants say the same thing. When they come to Korea, they are amazed at the service provided at our conventions,” said Kim Young-soo, director of the international tourism division at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

“Korea’s MICE (meeting, incentives, convention, events and exhibition) industry ranks top 10 in the world. However, it still has room for improvement. It needs more professional convention organizers and more qualified personnel.”

According to statistics compiled by the Union of International Associations, Korea’s ranking on convention hosting jumped from eighth in 2010 to sixth last year. Singapore topped the list followed by United States, Japan and France.

For the tourism industry to really take off, it needs to rapidly expand infrastructure and focus national energy into building the industry.

“Since 20 years ago, all of the national energy had been focused on building the IT industry. The KTO and culture ministry’s combined budget for tourism this year was less than 1 trillion won, which is less than 0.3 percent of the national budget. But tourism contributes to 5.3 percent of GDP and 7 percent in job creation,” said Lee.

“To quickly expand the infrastructure, the government needs to invest. When there was a sudden surge in inbound tourism, the government always went ahead and built initiatives. If you leave it to private investors, it takes time. We need fast government action to quickly expand.”

Software ― content

On top of infrastructure comes software such as ideas, content, and storytelling.

But for more creative software to be developed, we need a change in people’s perception about tourism.

“We don’t have a high-tech image. It’s still low-tech. We need a sophisticated tourism culture. Time will do it but we need to keep preaching, convincing, and showing people things,” said Lee.

“Back in the old days when everything was focused on building the economy, leaders didn’t put much emphasis on preserving cultural assets. They weren’t cultural leaders but military, business or political leaders. That’s a reason why we don’t have infrastructure and appreciation for our heritage as European countries do.”

Sadly, tourism had been looked down upon until now and much of it had been focused on entertainment, not learning. But to enable people to experience our history, culture, and philosophy, we need to utilize our cultural assets.

“There are growing numbers of cultural experience programs. We have huge wealth of stories in palaces. But we don’t utilize enough of it,” said Lee.

“We say Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, is such a wonderful invention, but if we ask people where the scholars met to create it, they wouldn’t know.”

The places where stories exist should be fostered into tourist attractions.

“In Europe, the very desk where a famous author wrote his work is in itself a tourist attraction. We don’t have that,” said Lee.

“We need to develop these cultural assets into a product. That’s what tourism is all about.”

The lack of storytelling in Korea’s tourism had also been pointed out by hands-on travel agents like Jinny Jung (Jung Myung-jin), president of Cosmojin Tour.

“We need to tell stories about the places we’re introducing. People are interested more in how kings managed the thousands of staff in the palaces and their love stories than the number of servants they had,” Jung said.

To tell good stories, there must be good storytellers. The problem is Korea lacks these qualified individuals who know the history and can deliver it well.

“There aren’t proper educational programs for guides. We need educational facilities to train them. The tourism industry must become smart,” she said.

“Because people tend to look down upon the industry, they don’t know it’s a great field to grow as a professional. The industry must provide adequate salaries to compensate for their work, but at the moment it doesn’t. That’s why the service isn’t of a high quality.”

Lee said Korea is only beginning to create such facilities.

“We need premium guides and storytellers and to do that we need to invest more,” he said. “At the moment, hagwon (private academies) are doing it but only to make money. The KTO also has an academy but we can only educate 300 a year so there are limits. Currently, there are 4,000 guides in the country and less than 3,000 are actively working.”

A qualified pool of individuals must be absorbed into the industry to upgrade the quality of guides.

“In Korea, we have guides who get 35,000 won per day for eight hours which doesn’t even pay for their own transportation expenses. They have other jobs such as farmers, teachers or housewives. So usually what they say is not that sophisticated,” said Lee.

“We need to pull in qualified people like retired professors or young people who’ve studied history and educate them as premium guides. But in order for them to do it, there needs to be reputable status and adequate, secure income.”

New paradigm of tourism

Tourism is changing. New fields are emerging such as medical tourism.

Korea’s medical tourism is at an inchoate stage but is showing signs of having the potential to grow rapidly in coming years.

The number of foreign medical tourists to Korea was 60,201 in 2009 and doubled to 122,297 in 2011. It is expected to reach 250,000 by 2014 and by 2020 it will grow to 1 million.

To foster the industry, however, a pool of quality agents is needed. The technology is there, the facilities are there, but there aren’t enough experts to act as mediators between tourists and hospitals at the moment.

“Medical tourism needs a high level of expertise. Now-active travel agents aren’t really qualified for that. A lot of trust is required for medical treatment because you invest your health and life into it. So with medical tourism you need a trustworthy set-up,” said Lee.

“For general travel agents, it’s very difficult. Most of them don’t have a trust build-up. The best medical agencies are run by doctors. We need agents with a medical background who can give consultation and connect patients to healthcare centers in Korea.”

A good example is Russia which has a huge agency in Vladivostok. Doctors there don’t get paid very well so they become agents. Such professional agents enhance the quality of the tour agents.

“Now we have highly-qualified doctors and high-level technology as well as luxury facilities. Saudi princes even come with their whole entourage (of 25 people) to get a full medical check-up,” said Lee.

But even the high-tech medical system needs a revamp in terms of service and operation, experts say.

“The advantages of the Korean medical system are that it has good surgeons with manual dexterity, state-of-the-art equipment and advanced treatment modalities,” said John A. Linton, medical director at the International Healthcare Center of Yonsei University Severance Hospital, during the 2012 Korea International Medical Tourism Convention at KINTEX in Goyang on Oct. 18.

“But Korean hospitals have weaknesses as well. The reception areas are crowded, hospitalization lacks privacy, and there is limited time for doctors to examine or speak to patients,” he said.

For medical tourism to grow and for Korea to attract more foreign patients, Korean hospitals need to meet their needs, he stressed.

“We need to separate space and staff for international patients, and doctors and administrators fluent in English must be on call all-day. We need designated professionals for international patients as well as professionally trained nurses. We would also need contracts with international insurance companies for foreign patients to benefit from,” said Linton.