The Republic of Korea's tourism promotion agency will push forward efforts to stabilise and diversify the country's inbound tourism market this year, as part of its broader aims to achieve qualitative growth, the Yonhap news agency reported on 31 January .

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

The Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) plans to unfold a two-track approach where it focuses on stabilising inflows of visitors from such countries as China, Japan and the United States, while diversifying its portfolio by attracting people from other countries, including Viet Nam and India.

The tourism promotion agency said it will strengthen marketing efforts on different target groups and develop new high value tourism products.

A total of 13.3 million foreigners visited the RoK last year down 22.7% from a year earlier, Yonhap cited data from the KTO.

The number of Chinese nationals who visited the RoK stood at 4.16 million last year, down a sharp 48.3% from 8 million tallied the previous year.  The Chinese accounted for nearly half of the 17 million foreigners who visited the RoK in 2016.

(Source: VNA)