JEJU-DO < invest Korea

According to Yonhap News,

According to a study, Jeju will need additional tourist accommodation facilities to achieve the goal to attract 10 million tourists this year.

Jeju said it needs 17,406 rooms to accommodate 10 million tourists.

The figure is based on the assumption that about 70 percent of rooms in Jeju's accommodations would be occupied. Rooms of general hotels and motels are excluded because they are not widely used by travelers.

Given that current accommodation facilities in Jeju have 13,507 rooms, additional 4,349 rooms are needed. This means that an average of 8,698 travelers can't find rooms to stay.

The shortage of rooms is expected to worsen in August, the peak season of Jeju Island. In fact, about 899,800 tourists had difficulty making reservation for hotel rooms last August.

The difficulty in making reservation for luxury hotel rooms is expected this year as the World Conservation Congress (WCC) is scheduled to be held by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in September with about 10,000 participants from 180 countries attending.

The WCC is called "Environment Olympics", being organized by the IUCN for every four years to discuss natural conservation, biodiversity and climate change.

Jeju will finance developers who will convert existing buildings to tourism accommodation facilities or build new ones with its tourism promotion fund, in order to address the shortage.

Jeju saw 661,268 and 646,843 tourists in January and February, respectively, up 21.1 and 15.1 percent from a year earlier.

Source Text

Source: Yonhap News (Mar. 15, 2012)

** This is an English translation of a Korean news article.