Despite the dip in the tourism industry amid the pandemic, it was business as usual for Visit Seoul, the face of Seoul tourism. We were busy running around planning new content for newsletters and staying up to date with attractions, events, and everything hallyu! And at the end of the day, there were some clear winners that arose victorious among this year’s content. On that note, here are the top articles for 2020 that managed to capture the interest of Seoul tourists across the board!
Top 5 Articles by Language Region
Next up are the Visit Seoul articles that took the top slot in each language region. To start things off, we begin with the No. 1 article for Korean: <Namsan Mountain Trail> . Following the wake of the pandemic, a lot of interest was shown toward outdoor attractions where it’s easier to avoid the crowds, leading to a slew of other articles covering the “untact,” or social-distanced traveling trend. For our English page, the top seed belonged to <Coex Mall> , which is set in the downtown Gangnam area. Renowned as the largest mall underground shopping mall in Asia, visitors come seeking out all the different sites and sounds at the Starfield Library, Coex Aquarium, and more. Those sifting through our Japanese content were most taken by <Gyeongbokgung Palace> which makes its presence known every year with this year being no exception! Also, the amount views for the hallyu category was particularly high. So high, in fact, it could be deemed as a fourth “boom,” or wave of popularity for hallyu in Japan, which was driven by the exponential growth of video on demand (VOD) market following social-distancing restrictions that went into effect from April. As for our Chinese (traditional) and Russian pages, <Rediscovering Seoul! Social Distance Traveling> saw the most success taking first place in both language regions. Lastly, the number one spot among all Chinese (simplified) content was <5 Modern Makgeolli Flavors> . Korea’s traditional rice wine, or makgeolli, frequently makes an appearance in K-Dramas, which seems to have resulted in the popularity of the alcoholic beverage. As a whole, this year’s most sought out articles can be broken down into the two categories of social-distanced traveling and hallyu. As we get closer to leaving 2020 behind us, it can’t be helped but to look forward to the pandemic coming to an end and the greater variety of Seoul tourism articles and content that is in store for 2021!
Top 10 Countries of Visit Seoul
For the last category, we have the list of top 10 countries that visited our website, which starts of with <Korea>, in the top slot, followed by <China>, <Japan>, <Indonesia>, <the U.S.>, <Taiwan>, <Malaysia>, <Thailand>, <Vietnam>, and <Russia>. Aside from Korea, the majority of the top ten are countries located in Asia that are perhaps in the vicinity of Korea geographically, but with these countries being the primary consumer of hallyu content, it appears that the interest in hallyu following its trending worldwide has contributed to the growth in Seoul tourism. Looking ahead, given that this trend will continue to hold its ground, the popularity of hallyu will follow in suit to experience even more interest and growth from across the globe.