Spain and Korea deepen tourism cooperation to facilitate the increase in post-pandemic tourists

During the inauguration of the conference, Minister Reyes Maroto pointed out that Spain is working to ensure that South Korean tourists increasingly choose our country on their trips to Europe. "They are welcome in Spain and we are looking forward to welcoming them very soon to rediscover the excellence and quality of our tourist destinations and products or the natural wealth that Spain offers and that the Camino de Santiago allows, especially this Holy Year".

For the minister, "Spain wants to recover tourist flows between the two countries and return to the levels of 2019 when more than 630,000 tourists visited us from Korea, which is the third most important source market in Asia".

The Head of Tourism stressed that Spain is making an important commitment to digitalisation and the application of artificial intelligence applied to the tourism sector. According to Maroto, citizens of the Republic of Korea have very useful tools available to organise their trip to our country. "One example of this is the Travel Safe platform, which provides safety recommendations and useful information for planning trips to Spain. The portal provides information on the requirements and conditions for safe travel".

Finally, the Minister also informed the Korean delegation of the progress made in the vaccination process in Spain, which has already given more than 30 million doses, with more than 45% of the Spanish population having received one dose and over 26% have been given the full course.

For Maroto, this data "offers a horizon of hope for the resumption of safe travel and the reactivation of our tourism sector", together with new instruments such as the European digital certificate that will guarantee safe travel within the EU and the OECD's "Blueprint for safe international travel" initiative, which includes common protocols for safe travel.

Biannual Tourism Programme Action Plan

After the opening ceremony, Reyes Maroto and the Minister for Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, Hwang Hee, signed the extension for another year of the Biannual Tourism Programme Action Plan 2020-2021 to complete the agreed programme that was put on hold after the pandemic.

A plan that follows on from the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed during the King and Queen's State trip to Seoul in 2019.

The Spain-Korea Mutual Visits Programme 2020-2022 envisages cooperation in the following areas:

• Exchange of experiences, statistics and human resources in the field of tourism in areas such as tourism promotion and digital marketing, market intelligence, planning and development of tourism destinations, particularly smart destination management, promotion of cultural heritage, governance, as well as coordination of different administrations and sustainable tourism development.
• Encourage the development of initiatives to increase tourism flows, with special emphasis on gastronomic tourism, film tourism, meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions/events (MICE) and medical tourism.
• Promote cooperation between the regional and local governments of Spain and Korea in the field of tourism.
• Encourage the association of tourism with cultural, artistic and sporting events, highlighting their potential for tourism development.

Other areas of co-operation are also foreseen, such as promoting the establishment of direct contacts between tourism industry associations and other related sectors in order to attract investments in the tourism sector, especially in the hotel and infrastructure sector, and facilitating technical assistance, through reciprocal visits of experts, the organisation of seminars and working and training sessions in areas of mutual interest.

Korean tourist data

According to pre-pandemic arrivals data, 630,000 tourists arrived in Spain from South Korea in 2019, 29.6% more than in 2018, representing 0.8% of total international tourists and the third largest source market in Asia, after China and India.

With an average stay of 6.4 nights and a total spend of 604 million euros, the average daily tourist expenditure was 2,268 euros.

The main regions visited were Catalonia (46.8%), Community of Madrid (31.3%) and Andalusia (18.7%).

Non official translation