Global travel info site launched in Korean

By Yun Suh-young

A website providing information on global travel destinations launched its site in Korean, the company said Tuesday.

The site, www.tripadvisor.co.kr, provides information about tour sites in Korea and all kinds of travel related information from hotel prices, best restaurants and even reviews from ordinary citizens and travelers about their experience.

The website offers over 60 million reviews and comments from travelers all over the world and over 10 million photos posted by travelers themselves. The site has traffic of over 50 million people every month.

"We hope our Korean users access travel information more quickly and easily through our website. Our main target is the Korean internet users. We initially thought Koreans would be more interested in overseas tour information but it was actually the opposite. More demand was centered on local hotels and restaurants", said Jason Chung, the country director for Korea.

The global website contains information on 108,000 travel destinations, 600,000 hotels, 198,000 tour sites, and 858,000 restaurants.

The website is serviced in 30 countries in 21 languages. The site's growth in the Asia-Pacific region is especially outstanding. There are about 8.9 million visitors to the website in the Asia-Pacific region.

"The launch of the Korean website is important in expanding the business in the Asia-Pacific region. We hope Korea's travel industry also grows through TripAdvisor", said Takanobu Yamamoto, vice-president and general manager of Japan, Korea and Asia Pacific market development.

The Korean version of the travel website has 1,980 postings on hotel and accommodations, 621 on restaurants, and 603 tour sites in Korea.