As a part of its post pandemic tourism recovery plan, Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) signed an MoU with the Educational Tour Operators Association (ETOA) for a 2-year long term plan. This plan aims to develop tour products for schools, universities and other educational institutes for international field trips and study tours.
School group tours from India to South Korea were growing at a rate of more than 200 per cent annually till the end of 2019. The destination offers unique learning experiences like visiting local schools, industrial visits to internationally renowned companies like Samsung, Hyundai, LG, KIA and team-building activities like learning the Korean martial-art, Taekwondo.
A variety of theme parks, ancient palaces and modern skyscrapers make it an ideal destination for both learning and enjoyment of students. Indian and vegetarian food is easily available in Korea, which is an added bonus when it comes to student tours.
ETOA is an upcoming association of tour operators established in 2015 in Mumbai. It focuses exclusively on educational travel and has more than 200 member agencies, who together handle almost 400,000 students every year for international trips.
Both organizations established contact in early 2021 and after a series of discussions, found it mutually beneficial to collaborate and develop a new destination.
As a part of the MoU, both partners will be extensively involved in regular destination training, product development and developing exclusive resource material for ETOA members. KTO will also be negotiating special incentives for ETOA members and seek to avail benefits from Korean Embassy for student visas. Once travel restarts, a top level ETOA delegation will visit South Korea to experience the product and give inputs for further fine tuning of the program to make it ready for Indian schools and universities.
“I am excited to work with ETOA to make South Korea the No. 1 choice of Indian schools and universities for their international field trips. Korea is one of the safest countries in the world and also one of the global leaders in technology and manufacturing. It is the ideal destination for students to know and learn about the future. By the end of our MoU team next year, I am confident we will have a fully developed self-sustaining Korea travel product category,” Young Geul-Choi, Director, KTO New Delhi office, said.
“ETOA is happy to be a part of this MoU by which all our members dealing in international educational tours can benefit. Our clients are always asking for different experiences and we need to be ready with new offerings for their new preferences for post pandemic travel. I think South Korea can be that next destination for ETOA members,” Sharukh Shroff, Secretary ETOA, said.
