Authorities in South Korea have decided to exclude Chinese tourists from the fee for the application of the electronic travel visa and also ease the process for duty-free tax refund processes.
The new changes have been applied in order to bring to South Korea a larger number of Chinese tourists, VisaGuide.World reports.
Besides, according to a report from Aju Korea Daily, the country is also planning to upgrade its tourism environment by curbing excessive competition among travel agencies and limiting super-cheap travel deals.
In order to help the further growth of the country’s economy, South Korean officials, in July this year, unfolded plans to issue a record number of visas to skilled workers from foreign countries.
While confirming the new decision, Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon said that it was planned a fifteen-fold increase in the annual quota to 30,000 to help companies overcome labour shortages.
Following the easing of COVID-related restrictions, authorities in South Korea have experienced a significant amelioration in many industries in this country, including the travel and tourism sectors.
In the first two months of this year alone, the country registered a total of 400 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2022.
At the same time, Authorities in China are also attempting to boost their travel and tourism industry. Last month, the country announced that it would abolish the ban imposed on tours to more than 70 locations.
Such a decision was confirmed by China’s Culture and Ministry, while the same stressed that group tours would resume to a large number of locations in Asia-Pacific, as well as North America, Africa and Europe.
The easing of group travel restrictions is also expected to help the further growth of China’s economy.
“It’s a milestone for the full resumption of the outbound travel, and will also strongly push the resumption of international flights, especially for Japan, Korea, the US,” deputy general manager at Spring Tour, Zhou Weihong, told the Guardian.
Outbound travel accounted for just 1.58 percent of all Chinese tourism agencies, recording a total of 318,600 outbound trips, a report from Travel Tomorrow found. This compared to 155 million Chinese travellers to other countries before the spread of COVID-19 and its new variants.
Besides, in July this year, flights in and out of China recovered to only 53 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. The statistics show that expectations that travel demand would significantly recover after the re-opening of borders have not become a reality.