Flight reservation to SE Asia surge for South Koreans

Flight reservation to SE Asia surge for South Koreans

Da Nang, Bangkok top destinations amid travel boycott to Japan

There are few passengers at the check-in counter for flights to Japan at Incheon airport. (Pulse photo)
There are few passengers at the check-in counter for flights to Japan at Incheon airport. (Pulse photo)

South Koreans picked Southeast Asian countries as their top travel destinations for a short holiday next week, with Japanese locations that had traditionally grabbed top ranks falling off the list amid trade conflicts.

Local e-commerce platform WeMakePrice analysed airline ticket reservations by South Koreans for Sept 7 to 15 and found Vietnam’s Da Nang ranked top of the list by accounting for 12.6% of international flight ticket sales, followed by Bangkok (6.5%), Guam (6%) and the Philippine’s Cebu (5.4%), Pulse reported on Monday.

Japan’s Osaka that had grabbed the second spot with a 13.8% booking rate following Da Nang last year fell to the fifth, and other Japanese destinations including Fukuoka, Tokyo and Okinawa that had made the top five last year failed to be included in the list this year.

Da Nang, the fourth largest city in Vietnam, has become one of the favourite vacation destinations by South Koreans. Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, came in ninth, with flight ticket reservation surging 456% from the same period last year. Airline ticket purchases for Bangkok also soared 249% from the previous Chuseok holiday, and those for Guam and Cebu also jumped 123% and 8%, respectively. 

Japanese cities were traditionally the top picks by South Koreans for relatively short Chuseok holidays, but this year, Koreans picked Southeast Asian nations instead amid mounting anti-Japanese sentiment following Tokyo’s trade restrictions on Seoul. Airline ticket reservations for Japanese locations plunged 64% on average, with Osaka down 62%, Fukuoka 66% and Tokyo 71%, compared to last year.

WeMakePrice said many customers who had booked flights to Japanese cities for Chuseok holiday earlier than July cancelled their reservations after Japan imposed export curbs on Korea in July. 

A survey done by local job portal Saramin on 2,570 corporate employees last week found that 37.3% chose Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia for their favourite overseas travel destinations, followed by China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau selected by 20% of the respondents, while only 8% picked Japanese cities.

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