It’s ready but will they come? S. Korea counts down to Winter Games
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea: Workers in the South Korean resort town of Pyeongchang are making final preparations for the Winter Olympics, remaking roads, renovating buildings and preparing menus in English, Chinese and Japanese, a burst of activity that masks a big problem.
With less than 100 days before the Games begin, barely a third of the tickets have been sold.
“It’s a bummer,” said 55-yearold motel owner Oh Young-whyan, who spent about US$ 360,000 refurbishing his 15-room property close to the Olympics Plaza.
Oh, other hotel owners and local authorities say political tensions with North Korea and China have chilled foreign interest in the Games, which open on Feb. 9 just 80 km from the world’s most heavily fortified border.
Tourists are reluctant to commit to the event as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and US President Donald Trump trade insults and threats of mutual destruction after the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September.
Ticket sales are weak, with 341,327 sold, or 32 per cent of the total on offer, as of Oct 24 - much weaker than during the run-up to the last winter Games in Sochi, Russia. More than 70 per cent of Sochi’s tickets were sold before
We still have 100 days so I’m not that worried. Oh, owner of the Daekyanryung-sanbang motel
the opening ceremony.
Pyeongchang Organising Committee Secretary General Yeo Hyung-koo says there is still time to catch up. The Olympics torch relay, which began in Korea on Wednesday, will ignite domestic interest, he said.
Local business are also putting on a brave face, hoping for a late surge in interest, especially from Chinese tourists after Beijing this week set aside a dispute with Seoul over an anti-missile system.
“We still have 100 days so I’m not that worried,” said Oh, owner of the Daekyanryung- sanbang motel, where Olympics banners were hung inside and out.
Nearby, a bus terminal which undertook a US$ 447,000 makeover in preparation for the Olympics was largely empty, with only one Chinese couple and a handful of locals seen waiting for buses.
Buses bound for Seoul in the past used to have as many as 38 foreign passengers, half of them Chinese, but nowadays some buses have no passengers, said Kim Moo- gyu, the owner of the terminal.
Before this week’s diplomatic b r e a k t h r ou g h , C h i n e s e authorities had unoff icial ly imposed a ban on tour groups visiting South Korea since March and stopped charter flights.
The number of Chinese visitors, which accounted for nearly half of all foreign tourists into South Korea last year, slumped 61 percent from March to September from the same period last year, official data shows.
Yangyang Int ernat ional Airport, the only international airport near Pyengchang, was quiet, with f light routes from Shanghai and seven other Chinese cities all cut since last November.
Min Byong- kwan, the chief executive of Phoenix Hotels Resorts, is counting on a pickup. The ski resort spent tens of millions of dollars building six Olympics courses and renovating some 1,000 rooms to accommodate foreign off icials during the Olympics.
“We a re making a lot of investments - and booking a lot of losses - through the Olympics,” Min said.
“It is regrettable that the Olympics boom is falling short of our expectations so far.”
But he added: “I expect the boom to experience exponential growth for the remaining 100 days.”