The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it will hold ‘Seoul International Travel Mart 2017 (2017 SITM)’ at the Grand Hilton Seoul Hotel (Hong-Eun-dong) in cooperation with Korea Travel Agency Association.
- Book Your Custom Private Tour in Korea
- Book Descendants Of The Sun + DMZ Tour
- Dokkaebi(Goblin) Shooting Location Day Tour – Seoul Area
This event was planned to invite major country travel agencies with a high proportion of tourists visiting the country and to provide opportunities for business meetings in order to support overseas promotions of domestic tourism companies that are difficult to participate in overseas briefing and trade shows.
It is expected to contribute to the increase of domestic tourism-related companies’ sales by effectively supporting consultation through 1: 1 dictionary matching of overseas travel companies and the domestic industry.
The third time this year, both participating countries and companies expanded. Participating countries increased to 50 countries (37 countries last year), including Middle East, Western Europe and Africa, where it was not easy to meet domestic tourists. The number of participating companies also increased from 800 last year (300 overseas, 500 domestic) to 1200 this year (400 overseas, 800 domestic).
In addition to travel agencies in Korea, tourism-related companies in various fields such as start-ups and wedding tours are participating as sellers. A total of 400 counseling tables, one for each overseas buyer, are installed, and the buyer aims to increase the efficiency of counseling by matching the seller to a total of more than 5500 counseling sessions.
The theme tourism promotion zone and the publicity booth at Travel Mart will also be greatly expanded (100) to induce product development through the latest tourism trend experience in Seoul.
The exhibition booths of various tourist attractions such as Seoullo 7017, Seoul Dulae-gil, Seoul Night Market, Hanbok Experience, Seoul Tourist Attraction VR Experience Zone, will be offered to travel agencies.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government has gathered opinions from local governments and related organizations from the planning stage in order to realize tourism between Seoul and local governments, and jointly conducts public booth operations, tourism briefing sessions, and FAM tours. Through this, it plans to enhance the competitiveness of Korea’s tourism as well as to promote the tourism of other local governments.
Ahn Jun-ho, director of the Seoul Metropolitan City Tourism and Sports Department said, “We will make Seoul an international travel mart to promote business exchanges between the domestic tourism industry and the world market.”
PyeongChang Winter Olympics, five cities in the metropolitan area, the Korea Visiting Committee and other publicity booths to display and promote excellent tourism resources.
They plan to organize tourism information sessions for overseas travel agencies to support the introduction of various themed tourist contents, and to run Fumtour (15 courses) in connection with major tourism resources in Seoul and the province, and to experience Seoul and Korean culture.
In particular, this year, students from tourism high schools (4) and tourism universities (5) will participate in event supporters, publicity booths, and expert lectures for the first time. Through this, it is planned to become a representative tourism festival in the field of tourism.
80 high school students and college students will be active as supporters of the ceremony and interpretation support, and at the same time, they will show novel tourist contents by operating the experience promotion booth. They will also attend special lectures by the city on tourism (travel, airline, hotel) and discuss the future vision of the Korean tourism industry.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to analyze the trends of the overseas tourism market and various opinions of domestic and foreign participants to develop it as the best business place in Asia and the representative tourism festival of Seoul in the future.