Isles urged to go
after Korean tourists

Suggestion from the
travel business in Korea

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

A major travel-business operator in Korea has some suggestions for Hawaii on how to corner its share of a slumping tourism market from that country.

Mainly, it's a question of getting out there and selling, says Soon Suk Paik, president of Seoul-based Sharp Inc.

"You have to come up with more value-added deals that will be appreciated," Paik told a meeting of the recently formed Korean Visitors Association late last week. "If you move right now, I think people will react," he said, but he said the package tours will have to be "exceptional" if they are to beat the competition.

Paik said that despite an expected drop of 25 to 50 percent this year -- depending on who is doing the predicting -- there will still be about 2.5 million Koreans taking overseas trips.

"Six hundred thousand couples marry each year and 60 percent want to go on overseas honeymoons," Paik said. Winning any of that business or other Korean travel is going to be hard, however, he warned.

The first hurdle is the combination of competition and price. Aside from vigorous promotion and low price deals being offered by Southeast Asian countries, the Koreans are being bombarded at home by advertising and free-nights, cheap-fare packages to New Zealand, Australia, Europe, China and Japan, Paik said.

A typical honeymoon package to Thailand or Malaysia runs for 599,000 Korean won, or about $450. A four-night tour to the Philippines goes for 790,000 won, or $550, and a three-nighter to Guam is 749,000 won, or $600. Hawaii, however, is on the wrong side of a million-won barrier, Paik said, with a three-night package at 1,190,000 won, or about $880.

Paik, whose businesses include Sharp Travel and 15 other travel-related business, said one method he finds very effective is his connection with a major credit card company in Korea. He puts small travel brochures in with the credit card bill mailings and gets a high level of response, he said.

Hawaii should also mount a presence at major wedding and travel fairs in Korea, he said.

Paik said that while there is no doubt that Korean tourism is down, but the longer-term outlook is good. For one thing, Paik expects foreign exchange liberalization that will greatly enlarge and soon eliminate restrictions on how much currency Koreans can take abroad.

Still there are problems. Twenty major travel operators in Korea have quit or gone bankrupt this year, for example.

Casey Choi, president of the Korean Visitors Association, said 120,000 Koreans came to Hawaii last year and that was 13 percent market share of the 911,000 Koreans who visited the United States.

In the first four months of this year, only 2,200 Koreans visited the islands, said Choi, the Polynesian Cultural Center's regional vice president for sales and marketing, Asia. That's only a 2.5 percent share out of the 87,678 who visited the United States.