"Chungnam Province Aims for 140,000 Foreign Tourists Annually"

Chungnam Province is aiming to attract a cumulative total of 140,000 foreign tourists by the end of the year.

According to Chungnam Province and the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute on the 11th, the number of foreign tourists visiting Chungnam sharply declined from about 245,000 in 2019 to about 144,000 in 2020, and further down to about 42,000 in 2021.

The year 2020 was when COVID-19 spread globally, causing a significant decrease in local tourists due to the infectious disease outbreak. However, with the easing of quarantine standards last year, the number of foreign tourists in the region recovered to about 54,000, and as of the first half of this year, about 61,000 foreign tourists have visited local tourist sites.

Considering the trend of increasing local tourist demand, Chungnam Province aims to leverage this momentum to achieve a cumulative foreign tourist attraction of 147,000 by the end of this year.

First, large-scale events such as the ‘2023 DaeBaekje Festival’ and the ‘Geumsan Ginseng Festival’ are scheduled for the second half of the year, which are expected to help attract foreign tourists.

Earlier, Governor Kim Tae-heum of Chungnam Province visited Japan in May and China from June to July, simultaneously inviting for the DaeBaekje Festival and promoting Chungnam tourism. Last month’s full approval by the Chinese government for group tours to Korea is also expected to support Chungnam’s goal of attracting foreign tourists.

Additionally, Chungnam Province plans to implement foreign tourist attraction strategies by categorizing types such as youth exchanges, corporate incentive tourism, and individual tourism.

In the youth exchange sector, a fam tour will be promoted in November targeting about 100 local academy principals from regions including Shandong Province, Henan Province, Anhui Province, Shaanxi Province, Inner Mongolia, Gansu Province, Sichuan Province, and Yunnan Province.

In the corporate incentive tourism sector, efforts will be made to attract about 4,000 employees of large Chinese groups in November, while in the individual tourism sector, activities will be carried out through foreign social networking service (SNS) fam tours and local Chinese internet platforms.

In particular, Chungnam Province plans to prepare a ‘Capital Region + Chungnam Combined Travel Package’ linked with the Seoul metropolitan area, considering that most foreign tourists visiting Korea pass through the capital region.

Kang Gwan-sik, Director of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Chungnam Province, said, “We will strive to achieve the goal of attracting foreign tourists to successfully hold all local festivals and thereby promote the revitalization of the local economy.”

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