Monday, April 28th, 2014
SEOUL, KOREA - Following the capsizing of the passenger ferry Sewol killing 300 including those missing, the travel industry is feeling the impact directly. According to major travel agencies on April 25, so many school field trips have been cancelled, with the number of new reservations for May falling in half from a year ago. Especially hit are travels to island destinations including those to Jeju Island to which the Sewol was taking more than 200 high school students.
For example, Mode Tour said cancelled domestic travels accounted for about 20 percent of all reservations for nine days between April 16, the day the ferry boat sank, and 24. As many as 54 percent of reservations to island destinations such as Ulleung, Heuksan, Oie, and Bogil have been called off.
For overseas trips, short-distance reservations took the most hit. Hana Tour reported that the cancellation rate for its packaged tours to Japanese destinations has increased by 36 percentage points from the period before the incident. In particular, the rate of people who cancelled boat trips between Busan and Japanese port cities was highest of all. Mode Tour said the number of cancelled customers for trips departing from Busan was 1,100 since the 16th, of which 90 percent were those taking ferry boats.
Earlier, the travel industry had expected a rapid rise in their booking figures thanks to long holidays in May and June. But that may turn out to be rosy predictions. Travel industry officials said, "Given the society-wide atmosphere of mourning, the current state of slow business will continue until early May at least." Indeed, some travel agencies, such as YB Tour and VeryGood Tour decided to stop airing TV commercials until the end of April out of courtesy to those bereaved families.