The “2025 Korea Grand Sale” ended successfully, attracting 346,000 foreign tourists, the largest ever. This is an achievement that more than doubled compared to the previous year.
The “Korea Grand Sale” is a representative shopping culture and tourism festival in Korea that has been promoted since 2011 to attract foreign tourists and promote consumption during the off-season of tourism to Korea (January to February).
This year, 1,680 companies, the largest number ever, provided various discounts and benefits throughout Korean travel and shopping, including aviation, lodging, shopping, food and experience, and strengthened shopping and tourism convenience services.
In the “K-Travel Promotion,” not only 10 domestic airlines, including Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, and Eastar Jet, but also global online travel agencies (OTA) participated.
Through the promotion, it sold a total of 346,000 tickets to Korea this year, up 103.6 percent from the previous year.
In the tourism product exhibition held in collaboration with global online travel agencies (OTA) such as Konest and TripCom, more than 40,000 tourism products, including accommodation and experience, were sold (258% increase compared to the previous year’s event).
A total of 185,000 benefits were used for the “K-Shopping Exhibition,” which includes major department stores, duty-free shops, large discount stores, and outlets such as Shilla, Lotte, and Shinsegae, and popular brands such as CJ Olive Young, Musinsa Standard, and KTown4U.
In particular, sales of hypermarkets and outlets increased by up to 185% and 27%, respectively, compared to the previous year’s event period.
This year, through new collaborations with various companies, it also expanded services such as transportation (cakao mobility taxi call discount), food and beverage (discount and drink discount when booking a catch table restaurant), map (store information and directions through Naver map), and payment (Wowpass reserve refund and UnionPay instant discount) to improve foreigners’ shopping convenience.
The number of use of shopping payment promotions exceeded 41,000 cases, up 429% from the same period last year.
Experience events on various K-contents such as K-pop, food, beauty (beauty), cultural heritage, and local culture, which are greatly loved overseas, were also held in a more colorful manner.
856 foreigners from 70 countries participated in a total of 19 programs, enjoying the charm of “K-Culture,” which can only be experienced in Korea.
More than 24,000 foreign tourists visited the Welcome Center, which was operated in Myeong-dong, Hongdae, Seongsu, Gangnam, and Jamsil, which are popular tourist destinations for foreigners, up 10% from the previous year’s event.
In line with the “2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) First Senior Official Meeting,” the Gyeongju Hwabaek Convention Center operated a “Special Welcome Booth” from February 24 to 28, providing food and transportation benefits in Gyeongju, and promoting Korean tourism and local festival products.
According to a survey of foreign tourists who visited the Welcome Center during the event, 92.5% said they were “satisfied” with the “2025 Korea Grand Sale,” and 90.6% said they were “willing to revisit Korea during the future Korea Grand Sale.” The figures are up 1.7 percentage points and 1.4 percentage points from the previous year, respectively.
A Chinese tourist who visited the welcome center for the 10,000th time said, “The benefits of ‘Korea Grand Sale’ were well explained in Chinese as well as English, so I was able to enjoy shopping conveniently.”
Kim Jung-hoon, head of the Tourism Export Strategy Promotion Team of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said, “In line with the changing tourism trend, we will further expand attractive tourism contents and experiential programs containing daily life in Korea, and provide support for tourists visiting Korea to have a more convenient and satisfying trip.”
link
