▲ Tourism Promotion Conference of Chungcheognam-do for Indonesia

Chungcheongnam-do hosted the first tourism information session in Indonesia from July 30th to August 3rd in an attempt to attract more tourists from Southeast Asia and, ultimately, seek diversification of foreign tourists to the province by strategically targeting the region, which has seen a rapid increase in demand for overseas tourism.

Together with the local governments of Cheonan, Boryeong and Hongseong-gun, the province held information sessions and tourism exchange activities in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Southeast Asian nations have seen increases in the number of their citizens travel travelling to different countries every year recently, the number continues to rise from one year to the next.

This year alone, the number of tourists from Southeast Asia that entered Korea increased by more than 14% compared to last year. In particular, Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the globe and boasts the 4th largest population worldwide, 250 million people, saw 9.1 million of its people travel abroad in 2017.

The figure is estimated to surpass 10 million this year, which makes the country a top priority for attracting Southeast Asian tourists. Over 80 representatives of the local travel industry and reporters, etc. attended the information session held in Jakarta where the province focused its presentation on tourism resources, festivals, food and drama filming sites of Chungcheongnam-do.

Cheonan, Boryeong and Hongseong told about notable tourism resources and festivals of each area as well as Muslim-friendly restaurants and places with prayer rooms in consideration of the fact that 90% of the population is Muslims.
 

Following the information session, they visited large travel agencies in Jakarta on July 31st and August 1st to discuss the composition of Chungnam tour products with travel product planners. On the 2nd, they made a visit to the Yogyakarta region, which was the capital of ancient Indonesia and also known as the cradle of Java civilization and the capital of its spiritual culture, to talk about the vitalization of tourism exchanges between the province and Yogyakarta and the means of subsequent mutual cooperation based on the fact that both regions possess World Heritage.