Edge Davao 6 Issue 141

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EDGEDAVAO

VOL. 6 ISSUE 141 • SUNDAY - MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-30, 2013

www.edgedavao.net

Serving a seamless society

ENTICING THE

KOREAN MARKET By GREGORIO G. DELIGERO

T

HE aggressive campaign by local tourism officials to penetrate the rich Korean market has shifted into high gear in a move that will involve the chief players of local tourism. If it were any indication of things to come, a group of Korean travel agency executives blew into town for a five-day field trip cum market viability study last Thursday, September 26. Sunho Lee, who acts as sales manager for Cebu Pacific in South Korea, has been helping facilitate the

greg@edgedavao.net

group’s itinerary together with personnel and officials of the Department of Tourism (DOT) 11. He represents Global Vision Ways, the general sales agent of Cebu Pacific which has exclusive rights to sell tickets of the airline in South Korea. Lee and the group of Korean travel executives spent their first two days and nights at the Monfort Bat Cave on Samal Island and at the Crocodile Park in Maa, Davao City while being billeted at the Pearl Farm and The Marco Polo

Davao. Lee said the campaign to promote Davao City took center stage at the 26th KOTFA 2013 (Korea World Travel Fair) last May 30 to June 2, 2013. It was Korea’s biggest international travel trade exhibition with over 80,000 consumers and world-class cultural performances from participating trade organizations and entities. “Davao tourism (officials) who actively participated in the KOTFA promoting Davao as a major tourism destination asked

us to involve the travel agents. The purpose of this trip is to review the market viabilibity of a DavaoIncheon direct flight,” he said. As a regional air hub, Incheon International Airport is South Korea’s primary international airport and Korea’s third most populous city after Seoul and Busan Metropolitan City. Currently, Cebu Pacific has daily flights form Incheon to Manila, Cebu and Boracay and four times weekly from Busan. Lee admits that the

possibility of direct Incheon-Davao flight is still a “ very long way” and “very risky” particulalry in light of “there is no current high traffic demand.” One way to test the market, he said, is to explore the possibility of launching chartered flights among Korean tourists, particularly druing the months of December to February and the months of July to August, the winter and summer seasons, respectively, in South Korea. These are the seasons, Lee said, that people in

INSIDE:

Korea tend to spend more time abroad because of unfavorale local weather. The lean seasons for Korean tourists coming to the Philippines are the months of March to June and the months of September to November, the fall and spring seasons in Korea, repectively.“ The people there seldom go out of the country because of good weather (that enables them) to enjoy local tourism spots and destinations,” Lee said. Since the end of 2013

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