Hanryu, one of the representative cultural trends of Korea, has grown as a borderless pop culture ,hugely resounding neighbor countries in various aspects. Accordingly, imports of pop cultural relevant products are in a steep rise, leading to Korea as...
Hanryu, one of the representative cultural trends of Korea, has grown as a borderless pop culture ,hugely resounding neighbor countries in various aspects. Accordingly, imports of pop cultural relevant products are in a steep rise, leading to Korea as a cultural powerhouse with its image enhanced.
To make this trend keep on taking its cause rather than ending as a temporary frenzy, strategic plans and Hanryu tourism products development are needed. But this country is actually failing to successfully take that approach.
This paper tried to find out effective ways to lead to Hanryu spreading further and achieving better outcomes, giving actual helps in attracting more foreign visitors based on empirical and document study. To meet the cause, a survey of Hanryu experts charging in related products' marketing and development, tour guides, inbound travel agency officials, and Hanryu tourists was conducted from Oct 20, 2007 to Sep 15, 2007, in which 91 Hanryu, one of the representative cultural trends of Korea, has grown as a borderless pop culture ,hugely resounding neighbor countries in various aspects. Accordingly, imports of pop cultural relevant products are in a steep rise, leading to Korea as a cultural powerhouse with its image enhanced.
To make this trend keep on taking its cause rather than ending as a temporary frenzy, strategic plans and Hanryu tourism products development are needed. But this country is actually failing to successfully take that approach.
This paper tried to find out effective ways to lead to Hanryu spreading further and achieving better outcomes, giving actual helps in attracting more foreign visitors based on empirical and document study. To meet the cause, a survey of Hanryu experts charging in related products' marketing and development, tour guides, inbound travel agency officials, and Hanryu tourists was conducted from Oct 20, 2007 to Sep 15, 2007, in which 91 out of 106 questionnaires were accepted as available samples. They went through data coding, and then were analyzed through SPSS 12.0 for Windows, a statistics package program. The result is as followings.
First, Hanryu tourism products generally got positive responses in questions about influence on Korea and its regional economy, constant development and sales growth, while related governmental policies and the activity of tourist attraction approaches were considered as deficient.
Second, as for the product items, the development of various experience in popular soft opera locations and tour guiding quality in exhibitions and performances were turned out as less than expected. Meanwhile, Hanryu tourism product developers and marketers answered positively about the possibility of constant product item creation and the controversial origination of Korean foods, but actual consumers of the products negatively responded about that.
Third, tour guide system, tour information availability, and the connectivity to destinations nearby were generally evaluated not that good.
Fourth, the most popular future strategic plans related to Hanryu tourism products was traditional festivals distinctive to Korea, followed by beauty tourism products, mountain- climbing, rafting, horse riding, and mountain-biking in turn.
Based on the result, this paper suggested following solutions, improvement and development approaches to help constantly create new Hanryu tourism product items.
Government should change their perception about its supporting programs and build up feasible supporting systems in administration and policy, actively managing the whole process. Meanwhile, they should put constant consideration on shooting locations protected and preserved, setting up more strategic plans to developing its potentials remaining untapped.
In addition, rather than sticking to old items losing its value, opening-up of a new genre and quality improvement of cultural contents are necessary, trying to transform seemingly trivial things into high-quality products by adding competitiveness and ingenuity to them.
This paper provided basic data about Hanryu tourism product contents development by researching their current realities and problems through studying and analyzing the general views of its experts, developers, and tourists about the products in order to help develop constant, profitable Hanryu tourism product contents. In this sense, this paper is sure to be a reliable basic data for future plans of Hanryu tourism products.
The limitation of this paper would be not to cover the views of officials and residents in Hanryu-influencing regions, just limiting its survey to Hanryu tourism product developers, tour guides, inbound agency officials and Hanryu tourists. And it should have been better for this paper to feature actual realities of Hanryu in neighboring countries.
More studies should be followed to help produce more effective, constant Hanryu tourism products by analyzing people in more diverse parts and the actual situations and various aspects of Hanryu in other countries.