Seoul lacks rooms for tourists

Seoul Metropolitan City will likely be short more than 19,000 rooms per day for foreign tourists this year and the shortage will aggravate as the number of visitors is increasing, according to the city government on Thursday.

The figure this year when multiplied by 2.4, the average number of people using one room, means that 47,232 travelers will not be able to find accommodation.

The number of foreign visitors in Seoul was 11.4 million last year and is expected to be 12.6 million this year and 19.1 million in 2017.

“Supporting various types of accommodations such as bed-and-breakfasts, guesthouses and temple stay could be solutions,” said Park Jing-young, the head of the city government’s tourism policy division.

The survey suggested, however, that it was not easy to support types of accommodation other than hotels since the relevant tourism laws leaned toward the hotel business.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)