Tourism boss in visit to South Korea
THE boss of Wales's largest tourism business is holding key talks with South Korean government ministers in Seoul to boost visitor numbers to Wales.
Justin Albert, director of the National Trust in Wales, is hoping by speaking to South Korea's trade and tourism ministries it will help to boost the number of Asian visitors.
They are holding the talks as South Korea is seen as one of the fastest growing markets for tourism in Britain.
The region has also been highlighted as a key to the future of tourism in Wales.
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Mr Albert said: "There is no question that the next big tourism market for us will be in Asia, and with predictions that the number of visitors from South Korea will grow by 11 per cent, it is vital that we work to forge strong links with Seoul.
"We know that the current trend is for South Koreans to be spending longer and more money on visits to the UK, but there is little awareness of what the country offers beyond London's attractions.
"Currently only one per cent of those visitors come to Wales, yet we know castles and natural scenic beauty are a big draw for that market — and we're not short of either in Wales!"
Mr Albert is the only British representative to be part of the South Korean capital for a three day forum on building relationships and exploring other cultures.
Comments
by maxmin
Tuesday, September 04 2012, 5:09PM
“The problem is that the Welsh just do not get tourism - we are rubbish at it. The main reason is we do not understand the concept of tourism which is to welcome people from abroad to our country, and one of the things we should be doing is having literature printed in their language.
Forget printing everything in Welsh the people we should be interested in don't speak it and are not interested in it, what they want is us to have leaflets and brochures in their language so they can enjoy Wales.
If you want to see how to do it look at Scotland.”
by Philosoraptor
Tuesday, September 04 2012, 3:04PM
“Tough market, yes, but we have something they like that Japan doesn't have... Castles. They are nuts for them for some reason, we don't expect to become the number one destination for South Koreans. We just want to increase what little tourism from South Korea we already get. That is actually something we probably can accomplish given the fact the our club is now in the Premier League and getting TV time in that country, and we also have one of their star players on our team.
Swansea had 73,000 overseas visitors in 2011, and South Korea doesn't feature in the Top 30 locations from which the UK gets it's overseas visitors on vacation. We can probably surmise we get a few hundred South Koreans at the very most. if we can increase that to just 2,000 per year than that is a great improvement.”
by Stork
Tuesday, September 04 2012, 11:09AM
“This will be a tough market to crack. The vast majority of Koreans who travel abroad, go to Japan for their hols. And guess what, the vast majority of Japanese who travel abroad, go to South Korea for their hols !
Currently, visiting North Korea hasn't caught on yet.”