China's Golden Week no golden opportunity for S. Korea

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Not a single Chinese tour group visited South Korea during the just-concluded week-long National Day holiday, according to South Korean media, with the decline in holidaymakers from the world’s leading market in outbound tourism affecting sales of duty-free shops there.

The contribution of Chinese tourists to sales at Lotte Duty Free’s stores slipped 25 percent on an annual basis during the holiday that stretched from October 1 to 7.

Discounts aiming at Chinese tourists in a shop in South Korea. /Photo via iFeng.com

The decline came despite shops slashing prices and offering big discounts to attract tourists especially from China. However the cheaper price tags did not translate in more sales, which fell 15 percent year-on-year.

Chinese travelers made over six million outbound trips to 88 countries and regions during the holiday, but Seoul – only two hours away from Beijing by plane – did not succeed in preserving its spot in the higher echelons of hot destinations for Chinese tourists, ceding its place to Russia and Southeast Asian countries.

Estimates put the drop in overall Chinese visitors to South Korea during the Golden Week to a staggering 70 percent year-on-year.

Tourism in South Korea has greatly suffered because of the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula following Pyongyang’s accelerated missile and nuclear tests. The deployment of the THAAD missile defense system has exacerbated the fragile situation.

China has voiced opposition to the deployment of the US batteries and expressed its dissatisfaction about the move, as it undermines regional security and the strategic interests of nearby countries, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs repeatedly said.

An almost deserted Lotte store in Seoul./Photo via iFeng.com

Fewer Chinese tourists have visited South Korea this year. Between March and August, the numbers of travelers from China dropped by 62.2 percent. Figures of visitors from Japan have also been shrinking, falling for four consecutive months, according to a report by the Korea Tourism Organization, an organization under the South Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism tasked with promoting the country's tourism industry.

Observers in South Korea worry that the country's tourism industry battered by political disputes might not recover for years.