10-7-2024 (SEOUL) South Korea’s picturesque Jeju Island, long heralded as the country’s tourism crown jewel, is losing its shine. Fickle domestic travelers are increasingly opting for international trips, while a fatty pork controversy has also tarnished the island’s famed black-pork restaurants and culinary scene.
In a bid to reverse its fortunes, Jeju’s provincial government is pulling out all the stops – enlisting an unlikely ally in the form of Indonesian influencer Anang Hermansyah. With over 6 million social media followers, the entertainer was named Jeju’s promotional ambassador in June and tasked with drawing more Southeast Asian tourists to the island.
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Jeju Governor Oh Young-hun proudly unveiled the partnership in a recent Instagram post, touting its potential to revive the province’s fortunes. “I had a great time with the Anang family, who are very active on social media,” he wrote. “I hope that exchanges between Jeju and Indonesia, as well as many other countries, will become more active.”
Anang, who first made a name for himself as a musician before serving a five-year term in Indonesia’s House of Representatives from 2014, now wears many hats – including as a judge on the hit reality singing competition Indonesian Idol – while also creating online content alongside his celebrity singer wife Ashanty, who boasts over 30 million social media followers.
Now, Anang is bringing his considerable influence to bear on Jeju’s tourism hopes, posting videos promoting the island’s restaurants and markets to his nearly 5 million Instagram followers.
The move comes as Jeju struggles to lure domestic visitors, who are increasingly opting for overseas travel over the once-beloved island getaway. Domestic tourist arrivals to the island declined by 8.3 percent in 2023, dropping from 13.8 million the previous year to just 12.66 million. Meanwhile, foreign visitors surged from around 90,000 to a healthy 710,000 over the same period, according to local media reports citing the Jeju Tourism Association.
The trend speaks to a larger shift in South Korean travel habits. Outbound trips taken are set to exceed pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year, with Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand emerging as the top destinations, according to a report by data analytics firm GlobalData. Last year alone saw 23.2 million such trips, or roughly 80 percent of 2019’s numbers.
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With domestic tourists accounting for over 90 percent of Jeju’s tourism industry, this exodus has dealt a blow to the island’s restaurants, hotels, and golf courses. In fact, more than 200 small-scale accommodation businesses closed down in the first half of this year.
“There are many Korean tourists who believe the expense of domestic tours in Korea is too much, especially compared to overseas trips in Southeast Asia, given the exotic value of visits to foreign countries,” said Jaemun Byun, an associate professor at Sejong University’s department of hospitality and tourism management.
In short, travelers have been doing cost-value assessments, and Jeju is struggling to compete with the lure of international travel. Jeju may have also suffered a reputational blow from a particularly unsavory scandal – the revelation that one of the island’s famous black pork specialty restaurants was serving substandard, excessively fatty meat.
An anonymous tourist’s viral social-media post showcasing the questionable pork belly, alleged to contain a staggering 98 percent fat, has hurt the reputations of eateries across Jeju, a restaurant owner told the Korea Times in May.
Yet the island is attracting increasing numbers of Southeast Asian tourists, data from South Korea’s Culture and Tourism Institute shows. Arrivals from the region surged to 277,600 in the first quarter of 2023, over five times the number of tourists from mainland China.
“Jeju was a very famous destination to Indonesians” before the pandemic, the island’s tourism organization said in a statement – noting that it was “looking for ways to recover” visitor numbers from the Southeast Asian nation. In 2019, around 22,000 Indonesians visited Jeju. Last year, that number was just 4,348, official figures show.
“We need to create demand for domestic tourists and establish new and innovative measures to improve Jeju’s tourism image,” said Moon Sung-jong, a professor of tourism management at Cheju Halla University. “Above all, the tourism industry must promise fair prices and good service quality.”
Anang’s promotional efforts are a potential solution. Sejong University’s Byun believes the celebrity’s involvement could be an “effective marketing tactic” for Jeju. But a more sustainable strategy, he adds, lies in continuous collaboration between local tourism-related businesses and government agencies.
Indonesia’s Tourism Minister Sandiaga Uno sees Anang’s Jeju ambassador role as an opportunity to indirectly promote his own country. “When he becomes an ambassador, there will definitely be people who ask about Anang’s country of origin, and he can indirectly promote Indonesia,” Sandiaga said. “I can entrust Anang to promote tourist destinations in Indonesia … I respond to this news positively.”
