South Korea, Thailand launch mutual tourism campaign for 2023-2024
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and its South Korean counterpart, the Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO), have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to boost tourism in both countries.
The campaign, “2023-2024 Korea-Thailand Mutual Visit Years”, was officially launched on Monday.
Kim Jang-sil, KTO’s chief executive officer, said South Korea’s biggest visitors were Thais, with more than 570,000 visiting the country in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic brought tourism to a halt.
Thailand is also very popular with South Koreans, with as many as 1.89 million visiting the Kingdom in 2019. This put South Korea in the 4th position as Thailand’s biggest tourism market.
“Thailand and South Korea have been each other’s important tourism partners since before Covid-19, which affected the tourism industry globally,” he said.
Kim added that the outbreak situation was gradually improving, and KTO will focus on expanding its target for 2023 to also cover business travellers.
“Though the number of travellers in the MICE [meetings, incentives, conferences, exhibitions] group in Thailand is still small, they have high potential due to their tendency to seek quality tourism and high spending power,” Kim said.
He added that KTO will coordinate with TAT to make boost mutual travel by launching promotional campaigns.
“We will also introduce more flights to different cities to promote local and cultural tourism, bringing Thai travellers closer to the authentic Korean experience,” he added.
“During the Covid-19 shutdown, we prepared several aspects of tourism to welcome Thai travellers, including exchanging information with the TAT about changing consumer trends,” Kim added. “We believe long-standing bilateral ties and close cooperation, Thailand and South Korea will be able to bring the tourism industry back to pre-Covid levels.”
