THE South Korean government this month announced ambitious plans to develop its marine leisure industry, with emphasis on the cruise sector.
It will construct five new piers dedicated to cruise ship by 2016, with improvements in immigration facilities for tourists arriving aboard cruise ships.
This comes four months after the National Assembly passed legislation permitting the operation of casinos aboard South Korea-flagged cruise ships, and a ban forbidding locals to gamble is predicted to be revised eventually.
South Korea has virtually no cruise industry presently, but the government sees great potential in the sector, given growing demand from increasingly wealthy domestic travellers and the booming Chinese travel market.
“This sector is extremely underdeveloped in South Korea and we do not have a domestic cruise operator yet,” Justin Kim, a service industry analyst with Woori Investment and Securities, told TTG Asia e-Daily.
“There has been very fast growth in this sector in the last few years, particularly thanks to Chinese tourists, but we do not have enough dockyards or other infrastructure to support the industry,” he said.
Cruise ship operators have also welcomed the proposals, particularly for the development of cruise terminals for Royal Caribbean International’s Quantum-class vessels at Busan and Jeju within the next two years.
“Japan is offering visa waivers for Chinese travellers, but South Korea still requires group visas,” said Zinan Liu, vice president for North-east Asia and China operations for the cruise operator, who added that visa waivers for Chinese travellers would push development of South Korea’s cruise industry even further.
More than one million foreign tourists arrived in South Korea aboard cruise ships in 2014, with figures expected to rise to three million by 2020.
