SOUTH KOREA. Chinese visitor arrivals to South Korea were up 31.3% year-on-year in February to 453,379, a 37.7% share of total visitors.
The Korea Tourism Organization’s (KTO) latest figures show that the encouraging start made to 2019 has continued; Chinese arrivals rose 28.7% in January to 392,814.
Chinese arrivals in February 2017 (before the dispute began) were 590,790, representing a -23.3% drop from then to February 2019, putting the latest figures into perspective.
Japanese visitor arrivals to South Korea in February 2019 were up 26.7% year-on-year to 213,200, representing 17.7% of the total. It follows a 23.6% increase in January 2019 to 206,526, when the share of the total was higher (18.7%).
Visitor departures by South Korean nationals were up 13.3% to 2,617,946 – an encouraging figure given the smaller 1.6% growth in January.
South Korean travel retail is overwhelmingly reliant on those three nationalities, and the positive KTO figures for February will interest travel retailers, brands and the investment community, who are watching the early 2019 market performance closely to monitor the impact of China’s new e-commerce law introduced on 1 January.
The revised regulations are in part designed to curb the flourishing daigou business (particularly important to Korean duty free but also a factor for many other travel retailers around the world serving Chinese passengers).
The KTO’s latest figures also showed that visitor arrivals from the Americas decreased 13% year-on-year in February, while there was a -23.3% drop from Europe. The regions respectively accounted for 6.4% and 5.1% of the total during the month.
