Jeju Air "8 out of 10 Prefer Leisure Travel"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] Eight out of ten people prefer leisure trips to destinations such as Guam, Singapore, Saipan, and Da Nang.

On the 20th, Jeju Air announced that this opinion emerged from analyzing the responses of 839 participants in a post-COVID overseas travel survey conducted via SNS over five days from the 13th to the 17th.

When asked about the planned timing for overseas travel, 41.4% of respondents answered "within 7 months to 1 year," making it the largest group. 24.9% planned travel within "4 to 6 months," and 12.9% within 3 months, indicating that 79.2% of all respondents plan to travel abroad within a year. Meanwhile, 20.8% said they have no plans within a year.

Regarding preferred destinations among Jeju Air’s routes, including multiple answers, Guam was the most popular with 344 votes. Singapore ranked second with 241 votes, Saipan third with 235 votes, Da Nang in Vietnam fourth with 223 votes, and Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia fifth with 205 votes, with leisure destinations dominating the top ranks.

As for preferred travel types, more than half (58.3%) chose relaxation with family or friends, followed by city tours enjoying gourmet restaurants, cafes, and night views at 20.6%. Enjoying natural scenery and cultural heritage accounted for 12%, leisure activities such as golf, hiking, and marine sports 6.1%, and trips for postponed anniversaries like honeymoons and wedding anniversaries made up 3%.

The item expected to incur the highest overseas travel expense was airfare at 38.5%, ranking first. Accommodation (28.2%), shopping (13.7%), food expenses (13.5%), and others (6.1%) followed.

Before COVID-19, the highest spending items for overseas travel were airfare (31%), accommodation (30.2%), shopping (18.4%), food expenses (13.8%), and others (6.7%). The ranking of airfare as first and accommodation as second remained unchanged, but the percentage of respondents citing airfare increased by 7.5 percentage points compared to before COVID-19. This likely reflects the burden of higher airfare prices due to delayed recovery of international flights despite increased demand following the exemption from self-quarantine for overseas arrivals.

A Jeju Air official said, “We are preparing to normalize international flights in line with the easing of social distancing policies such as the exemption from self-quarantine for overseas arrivals,” adding, “We will continue our efforts to establish ourselves as a leading airline in the post-COVID era.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.