외국인 관광객 평균 150만원 지출... 전년 대비 12.1% 감소<br /><br />Tourism is one of the most lucrative sources of income for a country, but a recent report shows that the average spending by foreign visitors to South Korea has decreased steadily over the past year.<br />Won Jung-hwan reports. <br />Foreign tourists are spending less when they visit South Korea,… and the figure has decreased so much that it's now at a level which was last seen a decade ago.<br />According to data by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization on Tuesday,... <br />foreign tourists spent an average of 1-thousand-2-hundred-68 U.S. dollars per trip in the first quarter of this year.<br />That's down 12-point-1 percent from some 1-thousand-4-hundred U.S. dollars a year ago,… marking the fourth quarterly decrease in a row. <br /><br />Spending by tourists had been rising steadily up to 2015 when it reached a peak of over 1-thousand-7-hundred dollars per person.<br />Industry insiders say the falling numbers are due to Beijing's ban on Chinese group tours to South Korea following Seoul's deployment of a U.S. missile defense system.<br />Diplomatic tensions with China led to that figure falling from 2016 as the number of Chinese tour groups, who tend to spend more than individual tourists, decreased significantly.<br />The data also showed that Chinese tourists were the nationality who spent the most per person in South Korea in the first quarter, spending an average of some 1-thousand-7-hundred U.S. dollars,… followed by Taiwanese and Americans with some 1-thousand-1-hundred dollars. <br />The average length of stay by foreign tourists came to 6-point-9 days in the first quarter,... down slightly from seven days a year earlier,... but the level of satisfaction shown by foreign tourists who visited Korea came to 93-point-9 percent, up slightly from 93-point-7 percent a year ago.<br />Won Jung-hwan, Arirang News. <br />
