Greater Kaohsiung’s sagging tourism industry is set to receive a boost from the central government’s Tourism Bureau, after the agency this weekend signed a memorandum of understanding with Mode Tour, South Korea’s second-largest travel agency, to attract golf enthusiasts to the municipality over the next three years.
The bureau and the travel agency are already cooperating by jointly hosting the Taiwan Cup Golf Tournament, which started in Greater Kaohsiung on Saturday.
Mode Tour president Hung Ki-chung and his wife personally led 70 golfers to join the agency’s first golf tournament in the nation. Mode Tour has held tournaments in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines and other countries, for which it creates golf travel packages in which tour groups play in the competitions.
According to the Tourism Bureau, many people have refrained from visiting Kaohsiung since the gas pipeline explosions in July and August, which killed 32 people and injured more than 300 others.
It said that since he likes Taiwan a lot, Hung has asked that the tournament in Kaohsiung be listed as one of the overseas winter golf tour options offered by the agency.
At a memorandum signing ceremony on Saturday, Bureau Director-General David Hsieh (謝謂君) said an estimated 3.5 million South Koreans played golf overseas last year.
He said Kaohsiung has great potential for attracting South Korean tourists, citing its stable weather, affordable golf facilities and relative proximity to South Korea compared with many other Asian destinations.
In addition, more frequent flights between South Korea and Kaohsiung will facilitate travel to the municipality, Hsieh said, citing an increase in flights between Seoul and Kaohsiung that China Airlines and EVA Air implemented last month, as well as the launch of flights between Busan and Kaohsiung by South Korean budget airline Air Busan in December last year.
“Not only can the golf tournament boost tourism in Kaohsiung, it can also help raise the number of South Korean tourists to the nation as a whole,” he added.
Bureau statistics showed that 351,301 South Koreans visited Taiwan last year, an increase of nearly 36 percent compared with 2012. The bureau estimates that approximately 20,000 of these visitors played golf in Taiwan last year, with 70 percent of them going golfing in Kaohsiung during winter.
As of September, the nation had welcomed approximately 381,000 South Korean tourists this year, with the figure expected to hit 500,000 by year’s end.
Despite the rise in tourist numbers, the bureau said there is still room to grow. Statistics provided by the bureau showed that this year, the number of South Koreans going abroad to golf has so far grown by 70 percent compared with the previous year’s 3.5 million.
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