The Korea Times

Korean policymakers design cruise tourism revolution aboard giant ship

Inside the belly of a 169,000-ton ocean liner docked in the southeastern port city of Busan, Korean policymakers met recently to thrash out a new strategy for the country's coastal economy: turning passing cruise ships into deeper local windfalls. The summit, convened by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization aboard Royal Caribbean’s Spectrum of the Seas, marked the first time the annual maritime council has met on an active international vessel. The choice of venue underscored a sense of urgency as Seoul moves to fast-track an ambitious national target of attracting 2 million cruise tourists annually to its shores. To get there, tourism officials are pivoting away from rigid, legacy mass-shopping tours. Instead, they are deploying a newly approved supplementary budget to engineer highly localized excursions tailored to younger travelers and international ship crews, whose collective spending power has historically been left on the dock. A recent pilot project in Busan highlighted the potential of this targeted approach. By launching a dedicated