14,000 Foreign Medical Tourists Visited Incheon Last Year... 84% Increase Compared to Previous Year

The number of foreign medical tourists visiting Incheon, which had sharply declined due to the COVID-19 pandemic, showed significant recovery last year.

Incheon City announced on the 8th that the number of foreign medical tourists who visited Incheon last year was 14,606, an increase of 84.8% compared to 7,905 in the previous year. This ranks fourth among domestic metropolitan areas, following Seoul (473,340), Gyeonggi (50,708), and Daegu (15,010).

In 2019, Incheon saw a record high of 24,864 foreign medical tourists, but the number plummeted to 5,279 in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Taking advantage of the endemic phase, the city focused on securing existing major medical tourism markets such as Kazakhstan and Mongolia last year, while also pioneering new markets including Thailand, Vietnam, and China. Additionally, the city formed the 'Incheon Medical Tourism Joint Marketing Cooperation Group' to strengthen overseas presentations and networking.

Along with this, customized concierge and interpretation services for medical tourists, one-day healing tour services, and active promotion through charitable medical services and social networking services (SNS) were provided to promote Incheon medical tourism.

This year, the city plans to focus on expanding its global network and enhancing the brand awareness of Incheon medical tourism, aiming to attract 15,000 medical tourists. In particular, it intends to further expand high value-added wellness and medical tourism.

An official from Incheon City stated, "We will do our best to develop specialized medical tourism products unique to Incheon by linking the region’s excellent medical institutions with various wellness tourism resources, and to lead global medical tourism through active marketing efforts."

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