Country's leading travel agency reports record satisfaction scores, pivots to premium packages

Hanatour
Hanatour

South Korea's leading travel agency Hanatour is betting on premium packages and artificial intelligence to capture growth as the country's outbound tourism market rebounds from the pandemic.

The company said mid-to-high-end package sales reached 54 percent of total package revenue in the third quarter, a quarterly record. The gains were driven by HanaPack 2.0, a premium offering that scraps the mandatory shopping stops long embedded in Korean group tours -- a practice that generated rebates for operators but drew persistent customer complaints.

Hanatour has also rolled out specialized products targeting younger travelers, including programs that pair participants with experts or peers of similar age who share common interests. Cumulative users of one such offering, Mingling Tour, grew 557 percent year-on-year through October.

As a result of these initiatives, the company's internal customer satisfaction index rose to 86 points from 77 in 2019.

Online channels now account for 52 percent of sales, up from 19 percent before the pandemic, with digital membership reaching 9.05 million as of October. The company has revamped its website and mobile app and introduced live commerce to drive online engagement.

The Seoul-based firm has declared itself an "AI First Company" and deployed H-AI, a multiagent system that handles customer inquiries, searches and recommendations. Hanatour expects the platform to surpass one million users by year-end. Internally, AI tools have cut product registration time by more than 70 percent and now field 40 percent of refund-related queries automatically.

The company is also expanding abroad, establishing a Singapore-based investment entity and forming joint ventures in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia to capture outbound demand from those markets.


moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com