Ep 79: South Korea Emerges As Asia's Most Exciting Travel Market, with Dr Jaeyeon Choe

About This Episode

30 Jun 2021 • 38m00s

While most Asian borders remain locked, South Koreans are heading off on summer holidays to European destinations. They are also booking ahead for Lunar New Year 2022. So what are the reasons behind this unexpected renaissance in one of Asia’s largest outbound travel markets?

This week, Gary and Hannah welcome Dr Jaeyeon Choe, Visiting Professor at the School of Hospitality & Tourism at Hue University, Vietnam, and a sustainable tourism consultant for Insita Bali, Indonesia.

Jaeyeon discusses recent innovations in domestic tourism, including “one-month stay” packages, camping and outdoor cooking tutorials. Now, with an accelerating vaccination rate, Koreans are eager to travel overseas once more.

Ordinarily, this time of year would see large numbers of summer vacationers flying to South East Asian destinations, so will ASEAN’s allure remain in future? [Spoiler Alert: Vietnam and the Philippines are hot picks.] We also talk about innovative booking trends, such as flexible packages and gamified TV travel promotions, an ongoing travel agency revival - and the rekindled passion for travel among Korean honeymooners.

Show notes

Dr Jaeyeon Choe’s LinkedIn profile here.

View All Episodes

Latest Episodes Catch up with the pods you may have missed

Play
13 Jun 2025 • 33m14s

Ep 257: Chinese Backpackers, Mountains Clad with Solar Panels, a Giant Lenin Statue & Delightful Almaty: An Epic Overland Journey from Bali to Britain, with Stuart McDonald

“I wish I had 640 days to do this trip, not 64.” Bali-based Stuart McDonald, founder of Travelfish, is 34 days into an ambitious two-month overland trip across 18 countries from his Bali home to Leeds in the UK. So, why is he doing it? What has he experienced en route? And what have been the finest discoveries of the journey so far? This week, Gary catches up with Stuart in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, to track back across his train and-bus route so far, which has taken him from Bali to Jakarta, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Play
6 Jun 2025 • 40m55s

Ep 256: A 'Resort Airline', An OTA Law Suit, Time for Timor Leste & Blackpink Back in the Area: May 2025 in Review

May was another hectic month of BIG travel, tourism and geopolitical talking points in South East Asia. This month’s roundup takes Gary and Hannah around ASEAN, from our home city of Kuala Lumpur to Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Timor Leste and Vietnam – plus China, India (sort of), Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan. En route, we discuss China’s new ASEAN visa, Indonesia clings to its high-speed rail ambitions, and ASEAN accumulates an 11th member, and perhaps as a 12th in future.