MoU to boost India-Korea traffic

Byungsun Lee, Director, Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO), shares his views with about India’s growing interest in the destination and the steps they are taking to boost arrivals from India to Korea.

The Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) is focused on increasing the Indian tourist arrival numbers and has been striving towards the same by organising various travel marts and other such campaigns. Elated by the outcome of their efforts, Byungsun Lee, Director, Korean Tourism Organisation, comments, “For the first time ever, the number of Indian tourist arrivals are expected to exceed 1,50,000 by the end of this year,” he says. “In the past five years, the growth of Indian tourist arrivals to Korea has increased by over 70 per cent. Ever since I began my role as the director of the KTO in India, I’ve noticed a sharp growing interest in Korean tourism from the travel industry. Korea is now becoming their top priority in terms of a new destination,” he adds.

Of late, major developments have been made between India and Korea’s relationship in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU) signed between Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India and Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of the Government of Republic of Korea, which was conveyed by Dr. Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question.

Commenting on the initiative, Lee says, “Thanks to the MoU, the air route between Korea and India will get a lot busier. With flight operations increasing to 19 times from a mere six times a week, the frequency of flights operating between the two countries will triple, thereby bringing about a drastic change for airline business. We hope that this will help increase the tourist arrivals from India.”

With one of the chief obstacles out of the way, KTO is now focusing on promoting winter tourism in Korea. “Korea has world- class ski resorts and we want to spread awareness about it in India. Our winter tourism facilities are top- notch, so much so that the next Olympic Winter Games in 2018 is scheduled to take place in PyeongChang, Korea. However, this fact is not very well known in India and we are aiming to vigorously promote this,” Lee adds.

Recently, New Delhi played host to the annual roadshow held on November 30 where over 250 travel agents attended the travel mart. It was followed by a celebratory Korean Night at Hyatt Regency New Delhi where KTO appreciated its Indian travel trade partners for their efforts in promoting the destination with an awards ceremony and entertained the guests with a fun-filled performance by a non-verbal martial arts performance called Jump. The chief guest of the evening was H.E. Cho Hyun, the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to India.