Foreign Visitor Spending Reaches 5.86 Trillion Won... Data Lab Enhances In-Depth Analysis of Tourism Trends

Korea Tourism Organization Unveils Fully Revamped Journey-Based Dashboard
New Themed Dashboards for Inbound and Medical Tourism
AI-Powered Data Assistant Planned

The Korea Tourism Organization announced on June 8 that it has completely revamped its tourism-focused big data platform, the "Korea Tourism Data Lab," into a user-centered, journey-based dashboard.

Korea Tourism Data Lab Inbound Travel Summary Screen. Korea Tourism Organization

The core of this update is the redesign of the main structure so that local governments and the tourism industry can immediately apply the vast tourism big data to their work. The previous single comprehensive dashboard has been divided into six themed sections: Inbound Travel Overview, Medical Tourism, Korean Wave, Cruise, Domestic Travel, and Regional Travel.

Each dashboard is structured according to the actual behavioral flow of tourists, focusing on pre-trip interest, movement and spending during the trip, and post-trip feedback. Local governments can use it to diagnose regional visitor flows and changes in spending, while tourism businesses can identify demand by purpose and use it to develop marketing strategies.

The new dashboard also allows users to view key inbound travel indicators at a glance on a single screen. As of April, the number of inbound foreign visitors was 6,770,982, up 21.4% from a year earlier, and foreign tourist spending reached 5.8624 trillion won, a 41.2% increase. The positive response rate after traveling to Korea was 79%, up 4.3 percentage points from the previous month.

A separate dashboard for medical tourism has also been established. As of April, medical tourism spending stood at 691.1 billion won, up 48.7% year-on-year. By country, medical tourism spending increased by 141.5% for China, 36.5% for the United States, and 23.0% for Japan. By medical department, pharmacy spending rose by 223.2%, dermatology by 54.9%, and plastic surgery by 16.2%.

Korea Tourism Data Lab Medical Tourism Screen. Korea Tourism Organization

A new "Interest Analysis Service" has been introduced to predict pre-travel demand. Global demand for travel to Korea is tracked using Google Trends data for seven major inbound markets, including Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, while domestic travel demand is shown based on search volumes from Naver Data Lab. An increase in searches for terms like "flight tickets to Korea," "Korea visa," or "Korea weather" from a specific country can be interpreted as an indicator of rising travel potential to Korea.

Data on foreign visitors’ credit card spending has also been broken down into K-culture specific categories, such as performances, beauty, wellness, and Korean cuisine. The Korea Tourism Organization believes this will enable a more precise grasp of Korean Wave tourism consumption trends.

The organization plans to secure additional data on accommodation reservations and payments from online platforms within this year, and to gradually introduce a natural language-based data assistant service powered by artificial intelligence in the future.

Mi Sook Lee, Head of the Tourism Data Hub Team at the Korea Tourism Organization, said, "We focused on connecting users so that they can immediately read changes in tourist behavior and demand and apply this knowledge to their work," adding, "We will continue to develop the Data Lab into an intelligent data platform widely used in tourism policy and industry settings."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.