SOUTH KOREA. Chinese arrivals to South Korea rose by +5.7% year-on-year in February to 546,408, representing an overwhelming 48.5% of all visitors – and underlining the travel retail sector’s reliance on the nationality.
In January, Chinese arrivals rose by +32.4% over January 2015, meaning for the first two months of 2016, Chinese visitor numbers increased by +17.3% to 1,068,389, a promising beginning to the year.
Japanese arrivals edged ahead by +1.3% in February to 144,493, and were broadly flat (-0.3%) in the first two months to 281,377 – a 12.8% share.
The really good news (see top table) comes from departures by Korean nationals – up +29.8% in February to 1,876,928 and +21.6% for the first two months to 3,989,265.
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Outbound departures of Korean nationals by gender for the first two months of 2016; Source: Korea Tourism Organization |
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Outbound departures of Korean nationals by age for the first two months of 2016; Source: Korea Tourism Organization |
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Visitor arrivals by gender for February; Source: Korea Tourism Organization |
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Visitor arrivals by purpose and nationality for February; Source: Korea Tourism Organization |
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Accumulative visitor arrivals by gender for first two months; Source: Korea Tourism Organization |
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Accumulative visitor arrivals by purpose and nationality for first two months; Source: Korea Tourism Organization |
