The Korean tourism board is aggressively promoting its Muslim-friendly tourist opportunities. On Oct. 17, the CEO of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), Jung Chang-soo, visited Indonesia and held a special dinner with travel agents and local media outlets to promote a Muslim-friendly Korea.
On this occasion Jung explained why Korea is interested in developing Muslim-friendly tourism that targets the Southeast Asian market.
"We are taking steps to diversify and expand our target market, after having focused on the mainland Chinese market. Now, we're focusing on Indonesia, the biggest Muslim market in Southeast Asia, to boost the growth of the Korean tourism industry," Jung said.
Jung expressed his interest and enthusiasm by wearing batik attire that night. Batik is Indonesia's traditional cloth, with a singular and classic design.
Jung said that, as part of the Muslim-friendly Korea campaign, his organization will introduce Muslim-friendly restaurants in Korea this month, and will organize a halal restaurant week in November for Muslim tourists.
"We do it in the framework of developing friendly business relationships, so that Muslim tourists can feel more comfortable when visiting Korea," Jung said.
It's quite reasonable that the Korean tourism promotion bureau pay special attention to Indonesia in promoting its Muslim-friendly tourism choices. The KTO database shows that about 220,000 Indonesian tourists travel to Korea each year. It puts Indonesia in ninth place, in terms of the number of the tourists who visit Korea.
The KTO in Jakarta estimates that the number will increase to 250,000 this year, putting Indonesia in eighth place.
Furthermore, Jung sees Indonesia as becoming a potential marketplace for tourism in the next 10 years, and predicts that it will be in fourth place in terms of inbound tourists to Korea, side by side with mainland China, Japan and the U.S. The Indonesian tourism industry itself has grown by 53 percent through to September 2016, compared to the same period last year. This means that Indonesia is leading the expansion of the tourism industry in Southeast Asia, which is growing on average of around 35 percent per year.
As a whole, there will be approximately 2.2 million tourists from Southeast Asian countries visiting Korea in 2016, or about 13 percent of Korea's inbound international tourists.
The KTO in Jakarta said that it will go all out to promote tourism to Korea in Indonesia next year, and that it will cooperate with Korean companies operating in Indonesia to support their businesses in order to achieve the Korean government's goal of having 15 percent of its inbound tourists being from Southeast Asia next year.
*this articel also published here
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