Hana Tour expo to tout travel to Taiwan
Hana Tour has chosen Taiwan as a destination to highlight at this year’s event. At right is Taipei 101, one of the major landmarks in Taipei that is popular with tourists. [HANA TOUR]
The Hana Tour International Travel Show from June 9 to 12 will have more than 1,000 booths set up by globally renowned hotels, resorts, airlines, duty-free shops and tour agencies from abroad.
“The event will include not only consumers but also many industry officials so that each and every one can gain trust in one another to make better travel packages,” said Kim Ji-kook, president of Hana Tour, during a press conference on Monday.
The expo is being held in a space as large as seven soccer fields combined. To prevent anyone from getting lost and help people find their way around, the company decided to set up models of globally renowned landmarks inside the venue, such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Statue of Liberty in New York. Around such landmarks will be booths providing more information about the cities those landmarks are in as well as rest areas and photo zones.
The Hana Tour International Travel Show is running for four days next month at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi. [HANA TOUR]
The expo’s choice of destination this year is Taiwan, which has been popular among Koreans in recent years.
“The beautiful scenery that is often featured in many movies and dramas attracts travelers of all ages to Taiwan,” said Hana Tour. To show a glimpse of what one can experience in Taiwan, the expo will feature a space where visitors can try popular snacks from Taiwan, such as pineapple cake.
In addition to holding the expo, Hana Tour, which mostly deals with Korean customers, is planning to expand its business to cater to foreign travelers.
“We have mostly catered to outbound Korean travelers, but we have also started to reach out further to embrace more inbound travelers to Korea,” explained President Kim.
As one way to host more foreign travelers coming to Korea, Hana Tour has been expanding to operate more hotels in Korea. It has opened hotels such as the Tmark Hotel Myeondong, a spin-off of its Center Mark Hotel in Jongno, both in central Seoul. The company is opening another hotel next month: the Tmark Grand Hotel Myeongdong. The company also began operating the SM Duty Free store in Insa-dong, central Seoul, last month.
In addition, the tour company has recognized that there is demand in Korea for overseas tour package programs in languages other than Korean. The company says statistics from the Ministry of Justice shows that there are about 1.14 million foreigners and about 320,000 foreign nationals of Korean descent living in Korea as of last year.
Hence, It is putting together guided tour packages departing from Korea and traveling to Japan for non-Korean speakers. It has been running a new English-language package to Hakkaido in northern Japan since April.
“We are trying to draw out the demand from many potential travelers in Korea who have been reluctant in choosing a packaged tour due to the language barrier,” said Jo Yoon-ha, executive director for the company’s Package Business Japan.
“We are starting to provide English service for best-selling packages in Hokkaido, ... and we plan on offering such services for packages to other regions in Japan including Osaka and Tokyo step by step.”
BY LEE SUN-MIN [summerlee@joongang.co.kr]
Admission for the Hana Tour International Travel Show is 7,000 won ($5.90), but the company offers a variety of ways to attend for free. Hana Tour members can enter for free, and other guests can simply go to Hana Tour expo’s website and print out an invitation. Visitors can also add Hana Tour to their KakaoTalk friends list to get in for free.
For more information about the event, go to hits.hanatour.com.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)