Foreign visitors booking Korean rail tickets on Klook are increasingly heading to cities like Gyeongju, Daegu and Busan, according to the travel platform.
Klook, a booking platform for accommodations, transportation and activities, launched a real-time Korail ticketing service for foreign travelers on April 20. The service lets users check schedules and seat availability across all Korail routes on the Klook app or website and board with a digital voucher.
In the first three weeks after launch, through May 11, Americans accounted for the largest share of bookings, followed by Filipinos and Europeans, Klook said Tuesday.
Busan remained the top destination by booking volume with Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, and Daegu following close behind, suggesting demand is spreading beyond the country's two largest cities.
The pattern carried over to other bookings on the platform. Traffic to Klook listings in Gyeongju rose 112 percent for the same period from a year earlier. Daegu listings climbed 23 percent, and Busan listings rose 28 percent.
Specific local products drew sharper increases. Traffic for a day tour in Busan covering the Sky Capsule, Gamcheon Culture Village and Haeundae Blueline Park rose 53 percent on-year, while interest in a Hill Spa jjimjilbang in Haeundae jumped 70 percent. Day passes to amusement parks such as Gyeongju World rose 73 percent, and E-World in Daegu rose 33 percent.
"Since launching the Korail ticketing service, we've seen growing interest among foreign travelers in destinations outside Seoul, and that's translated into increased searches and bookings for regional products," Lee Jun-ho, head of Klook Korea. "We plan to keep expanding the environment that lets foreign visitors travel conveniently to different regions by train, improving access to local tourism."
yoohong@heraldcorp.com
