By Lee Hyo-sik
A Chinese healthcare and medical product maker plans to send nearly 13,000 workers to Korea as part of an employee incentive program in September, providing a boost to Korea’s goal of attracting 10 million foreign visitors this year, the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) said Monday.
In a recent business agreement signed with KTO, Pro-Health Product, a healthcare and first aid goods manufacturer based in Guangzhou, China, will send eight tourist groups of its best performing sales agents between Sept. 16 and 28. Each group will consist of 1,600 employees, totaling 12,800.
They will stay in Korea for six days, taking part in a company workshop and a tour agenda that includes Seoul and Jeju Island.
In 2009, Pro-Health Product organized a corporate incentive tour scheme for its employees to visit Taiwan in 2009. In 2008, the destination was Australia.
``It will be the largest corporate incentive tourist group Korea has ever attracted from a foreign country. It will encourage more companies in Asia to hold conferences and organize employee tours to Korea, helping to draw more visitors to the nation,’’ a KTO spokeswoman said.
In December when the Chinese firm first announced a plan to hold the 2011 corporate incentive tour program to Korea for its best performing employees, it planned to send about 10,000. But the number was increased to nearly 13,000 as KTO and Jeju Provincial Government offered more incentives, the spokeswoman said.