Chapter 3 Nation Branding and Tourism:
3.4 South Korea
3.4.3.3 Construct Korea Brand
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Convention Association serves as the platform to offer relevant information for recruiting the international conference and oversea campaign.
3.4.3.3 Construct Korea Brand
On the construction of Korea brand through tourism, Korean government
launched a series of activities since 2001, ranging from cultural tourism package tour, brand image investigation, and phrasal promotion campaign through online media.
Since 2001, the government has promoted the culture elements in Korea by the activity of Visiting Year, every year the government would select a county for the yearly promotion, and invite tourism agency to come and experience the travel
experience in Korea from the popular tourist resort selected from the public opinion in Korea. To increase the attractiveness of Korea brand, the authority provided particular discount service, covering accommodation and transportation.
From the investigation of national brand image in tourism, the government has conducted the survey from the public opinion and adopt "Korea, Sparkling" as the slogan to connect the characteristic in national brand with Korean culture and business element in tourism. In the year of 2009, the authority launched "Korea 100 Sparkle" to strengthen the brand image effect. Under the promotion campaign, the government cooperates with searching engine company Yahoo, and focus on four
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particular countries through three different phases for the marketing and promotion, first providing interaction with Korean popular stars, second the innovative story marketing of Korea traveling from domestic celebrities, and finally invitation for participants from the previous two activities to travel Korea for free and share the experience with online social media. From the interaction with the public participants, the government promoted the Korea brand with lower cost and benefit the effect of promotion toward the power of domestic and international publics. (Korea Tourism Organization, 2015)
3.4.4 Tourism Analysis
From the above discussion, we could find that the Korean government adopted series of projects and plans to foster the effect of tourism promotion and the
integration of tourism resource. Compared to the previous two East Asian areas, Japan and Hong Kong, Korea did not start its tourism industry as early as Hong Kong and also the Korean government did not have as many as resources as Japan. However, through a series of tourism policy direction, Korea has successfully built up its characteristic in tourism development through Korean popular culture elements and connection between the relevant service and brand image. In terms of the tourism policy, the Korean government confirms the basic guideline for the development of
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tourism, including Tourism Vision 21 and Tourism Development Plan, which are connected with each other by comprehensive submission or strategies to achieve. On the perspective of tourism resource, the government followed the direction of the policy, through the establishment of sustainable environment, promotion cities for leisure traveling and the development in the low development tourism areas, which takes the long term consideration of tourism development as well as the average growth of the whole tourism and neighboring areas. Finally, on the promotion of tourism marketing strategies, the government built up a characteristic national brand through the analysis of potential market and the organization of the international conference and MICE event, which create a direct interaction with the public audience from the investigation of national brand image in tourism and cooperation with the horizontal alliance from the online searching company Yahoo. As a result, we could observe that although Korea did not have absolute advantage in tourism
development, they built up an unique national brand through tourism from the consistent tourism policy, comprehensive integration of tourism resource and the marketing strategy in interaction with the public audience.
In conclusion of this chapter, in order to answer the second research question,
"How does countries in East Asian adopt tourism to build their national brand?", this chapter covers the discussion on how four countries and areas adopt tourism on
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constructing their national brand. With the four countries with close relations with Taiwan, how could Taiwan Tourism Bureau learned the strategies on nation branding from China, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea?
First, Chinese government sets tourism development within the national
development strategies, followed by the integration on tourism resource, especially on the quality of domestic tourism agency and domestic star ranked hotel evaluation system, and finally under the promotion by social media and international event and competition to increase the attractiveness of its national image. Therefore, what Taiwan Tourism Bureau could learn from the case of China is that improvement on the weakness of the tourism industry first and promote the feature through the major international event in the global society.
Second, Taiwan Tourism Bureau could learn from the case of Japan setting up clear and specific short, middle, and long term goals to achieve the objective; also the integration of transportation, tourism environment, cultural resource, and human resource; and finally the promotion by strengthening the tourism product, promoting of tourism sphere, and marketing brand effect in the international market.
Third, from the case of Hong Kong on their strategies in nation branding, Taiwan Tourism Bureau could learn from understanding the features and elements of Taiwan in tourism by means of survey investigation from the major targeted tourists; on the
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management of tourism resource, Hong Kong Tourism Bureau provides a clear example on the connection between transportation, tourism environment between the tourist spots and local township development, and also the reservation in the
traditional elements in street culture; and on the promotion strategy, Taiwan Tourism Bureau could learned how did Hong Kong eliminates the negative SARS association to increase the positive image effect.
Finally, the case of South Korea offers specific objectives in policy, especially on the number of tourist arrivals and the tourist revenue; in resource, Korean Tourism Bureau constructs the sustainable tourism environment, selects themed cities for yearly tourism, and implements investment in comparatively lower tourism developed area; and at the end, Korean Tourism Bureau constructs the positive Korea brand by means of broadening the overseas markets and increasing MICE, are all good examples for Taiwan Tourism Bureau as successful examples to follow up.