Muslim tourists spotlighted as a new customer to fill in void left by Chinese tourists in Korea

Muslims tourists are attracting attention as new customer to fill vacancies in Chinese tourists who have been significantly decreased since the placement of the THAAD (high-altitude missile defense system) on the Korean Peninsula.

According to the Korea Tourism Organization (KITA) on Monday, about 870,000 Muslim tourists visited Korea last year.
It decreased 11.7 percent from the previous year (985,885) but increased 17.4 percent from 748,691 in 2015.

Considering that the number of foreign tourists (13.34 million) who visited Korea in 2017 decreased by 22.7% from the previous year, the decrease in Muslim tourists visiting Korea last year is not significant.

Most of the Muslims visiting Korea are tourists from Southeast Asia.

The number of Indonesian tourists visiting last year decreased by 21.9 percent to 23,387, while the number of Malaysian tourists decreased by 1.2 percent to 300,740.

Middle Eastern and North African account for less than 10% of the total number of Muslims visiting Korea while tourists from Indonesia and Malaysia which have a high percentage of Muslim population account for about 45% of the Muslims who visited Korea,
Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the proportion of middle east countries out of total Muslim tourists visited Korea is small, but the total expenditure per person is three to four times more than Southeast Asian Muslim tourists.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesian tourists spent an average of 849,282 won in Korea and 796,995 won for Malaysian, while tourists from UAE spent 246,8942 won and those from Saudi Arabia spent 3.157 million won per person on average.

In particular, many Saudi Arabia and UAE tourists are looking for Korea for high value-added medical tourism.

As of 2016, 31% of UAE tourists visiting the country and 13% Saudi Arabian tourists visited Korea for medical tourism.

Last year, Muslim tourists from the Middle East increased even though decline in the number of foreign tourists visiting the country overall.

The number of tourists from the Middle East last year was 217,538, up 12.4% from the previous year.