SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, September 10, 2018 — World’s major tourism industry leaders and travel agencies will meet together in Seoul in September. The Seoul city government said that about 1,200 travel business players and 900 academics and specialists from 60 countries will visit Seoul to join the 2018 Seoul International Travel Mart (10-14 Sep) and UNWTO’s 7th Global Summit Urban Tourism (16-19 Sep).

Seoul aims to take these large-scaled consecutive international events as the opportunity to let the world know Seoul’s quality tourism and MICE infrastructure and Korea’s attractive tourism places, in order to attract the tourists home and abroad. Seoul will provide a night tour combining the night view attractions and shopping areas, and the JSA-DMA tour course which are particularly popular among non-Koreans. These various tour programs with diverse contents will introduce Seoul’s charms.

Seoul International Travel Mart 2018 (SITM 2018) is Korea’s largest B2B (business to business) tourism event where 400 overseas travel agencies (buyers) from 45 countries and 800 Korean businesses (sellers) in 75 business types like hotel, leisure and wedding. SITM 2018 is a large-scaled international event which has been held by Seoul since 2015. The event aims to help not only the typical tourism businesses but also Korean small-sized tourism companies for global PR activities, as the might have difficulties in joining overseas conferences and trade shows. Through these measures, Seoul plans to create the demand of non-Koreans’ visit to Korea and to give some boost to the tourism industry.

Seoul has invited the relevant parties from 3 African countries (South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt). Actually, Korean small-sized tourism vendors have found it difficult to meet with them easily. By inviting those African business players, Seoul can help Korean vendors to break into the newly emerging markets. Seoul also expands the period of 1:1 business meetings between Korean and non-Korean companies from 16 sessions in 2 days last year to 20 sessions in 3 days.

• · Korean companies also diversify their tourism business types by reflecting the latest trend including sports tourism and tourism for the disabled. (68 business types in 2017 to 75 types in 2018)

UNWTO’s 7th Global Summit Urban Tourism is the world’s largest international conference on urban tourism, co-hosted by Seoul city government and UNWTO. This year’s event is the largest ever in terms of scale, and the first one which is held in North East Asia. UNWTO’s 7th Global Summit Urban Tourism is the cooperation channel where cities pull the wisdom together about the vision and issues of urban tourism and discuss new cooperation strategies. This year, 900 participants from 50 countries will join the event under the theme of “2030 future urban tourism” to discuss the blueprint of future urban tourism. Participants include the tourism ministers and vice ministers of countries with tourism edge including Spain and Thailand, the delegates of major tourism cities like Paris, Macao, Kuala lump, and Madrid, and tourism academics and relevant parties.

In particular, the global conference will provide the opportunity for participants to share the exemplary cases of different countries and cities, and to pull the wisdom with global academics about the urban issues in the world. The major issues would include the 4th industrial revolution, sustainable tourism development, and so on. Seoul is growing as one of the major tourism cities in the world. As such, says the Seoul city government, these events will be the chance to let the world know about Seoul’s appealing aspects of tourism through discussion about Seoul’s strong points including the 4th industrial revolution and urban regeneration.