New Boycott
The easing of COVID-19 quarantine measures has been leading to an increase in Korean travelers to overseas countries. Amid this change, “No Japan” sentiments have disappeared and “No China” sentiments have emerged among Korean travelers going abroad.
Consumer Insight, a Korean data convergence and consumer research firm, announced on May 24 the results of its weekly Travel Behavior and Planning Survey (500 people weekly and 26,000 annually) which asked travel consumers about their interest in overseas destinations and compares trends over the past four years.
Korean travelers’ interest in traveling to Japan increased by 30 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019, before a boycott of Japanese products (No Japan) while interest in China fell by one-third and failed to bounce back, according to the survey. While overall international travel interest has been returning to a pre-COVID-19 level this year, there were significant regional differences.
The survey used the Travel Corona Index (TCI), developed by Consumer Insight, to compare dramatic pre- and post-COVID-19 trends. The TCI quantifies the difference between 2019, before the pandemic and the present. The higher a number compared to 100, the more travelers increased and vise versa.
Consumer Insight chose the world’s ten destinations -- Japan, China, Hong Kong and Macau, Southeast Asia, and North America (the United States and Canada).
In the first-quarter survey, Korean people had the largest interest in the South Pacific as their international travel destination at 51 percent. The South Pacific was followed by Europe (45 percent), the United States and Canada (43 percent), Southeast Asia (40 percent), and Japan (40 percent), most of which have returned to the Q1 2019 levels when the world was free from the COVID-19 virus. Japan outperformed the other regions in terms of growth (with the addition of 9 percentage points) compared to 31 percent in the first quarter of 2019. However, Hong Kong & Macau only recovered to 22 percent, two-thirds of its percent in the first quarter of 2019 and China 6 percent, one-third of the same period.