[MICE Rebound] ① Over 12,000 Corporate Group Tourists Arrive... Captivated by K-Content

US Usana Company Executives Visit Korea
Experience K-Content Through Promotional Booth
KTO Wins Event Hosting Over Malaysia

"I have always wanted to visit Korea, and I am happily going through the schedule thanks to this event. After the convention, I plan to travel to Jeju."

On the 4th, at KINTEX in Ilsan, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi Province, Mr. Wang Kang from Singapore could not hide his excitement about his first trip to Korea. Along with Mr. Wang, about 12,000 group tourists came to Korea to attend the ‘2023 Usana Asia Pacific Convention’ held at KINTEX over a 2-night, 3-day schedule. The venue was packed with attendees from 16 countries including Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Yusana '2023 Asia-Pacific Convention' corporate meeting site.
[Photo provided by Korea Tourism Organization]

After the talk sessions ended, a long line formed outside the booths at the event hall. The promotional booths were set up by the Korea Tourism Organization to introduce Korean culture and tourism to foreign participants during the event. The corner where visitors could take photos with models dressed in hanbok was the most popular. The experience booth where participants stamped their names in Hangul on a folding fan also attracted many visitors. Usana Philippines staff members met on site praised the beauty of hanbok while looking at the instant photos.

Usana Health Sciences, the organizer of this event, is a global company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. For the Asia Pacific convention, Usana branch employees from around the world visited Korea sequentially over several days. The first group to arrive experienced various aspects of Korean culture through individual tourism programs in Jeju, Busan, and Gyeongju.

To accommodate the large number of participants, accommodations were also distributed across Goyang, Gimpo, Paju, and Seoul near KINTEX, naturally facilitating shopping and sightseeing. MICE tourists tend to spend about twice as much per person compared to general tourists. Therefore, hosting the Usana Asia Pacific Convention is expected to bring significant economic benefits. Thanks to the globally spotlighted K-content, it is also expected to greatly enhance awareness and preference for Korea. The Korea Tourism Organization estimated that the Usana Asia Pacific Convention generated an economic effect of 75.2 billion KRW in production inducement, 33.9 billion KRW in added value inducement, 16.2 billion KRW in income inducement, and employment inducement for 1,200 jobs.

Yusana Asia-Pacific Convention LIVE TALK site.
[Photo by Korea Tourism Organization]

The domestic MICE industry suffered a severe blow due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to data released by KDB Industrial Bank, during the spread of COVID-19, border controls and two-week quarantine measures tightened restrictions on international travel, resulting in only 55 out of 218 scheduled domestic events in 2020 being held. The remaining 74.8% were canceled or postponed, causing a total loss of 326 billion KRW.

However, as COVID-19 has recently subsided, the tourism market and MICE industry are gradually recovering. In response, the Korea Tourism Organization actively competed to attract MICE events and successfully hosted the largest number of inbound MICE tourists since the COVID-19 pandemic through the Usana Asia Pacific Convention. The previous record, including before the pandemic, was 14,459 employees of China Ping An Insurance, one of China’s top three insurance companies, in 2018.

Foreign tourists are taking commemorative photos at the Korea Tourism Organization's Hanbok experience booth set up at the Yusana Asia-Pacific Convention event. [Photo by Korea Tourism Organization]

The Korea Tourism Organization explained that, thanks to cooperation with the Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, Goyang Convention Bureau, and KINTEX, they were able to attract the corporate meeting, surpassing strong competitors like Malaysia.

To commemorate the first large-scale corporate meeting held after COVID-19, a meaningful event was also held. During the convention, on Children’s Day, Usana conducted a social contribution activity by delivering 1,000 food packs to vulnerable families at local children’s centers in Korea.

Kwon Jong-sul, head of the MICE division at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, "In line with the growing foreign interest in K-culture, related organizations joined forces to prepare various Korean cultural experience programs and to make this event contribute to local communities. Given the human-service nature of the MICE industry, we expect face-to-face corporate meetings and incentive tourism to recover rapidly, and we plan to expand related service infrastructure accordingly."

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