Busan is good

Busan Metropolitan City Launches 2026 Survey of Visitors to Busan, Using Tourists’ Voices to Shape Future Tourism Policy

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Busan Metropolitan City, led by Mayor Chun Jae-soo, announced that it will conduct the 2026 Survey of Visitors to Busan from today, August 24, through November, targeting domestic and international tourists visiting Busan.

The survey is designed to comprehensively assess tourism in Busan, including where visitors go, how they travel around the city, what they spend money on and how much they spend, and how satisfied they are with their trips. The findings will serve as basic data for future tourism policymaking. Busan Metropolitan City conducts the survey annually to assess the current state of tourism in Busan and incorporates the results into actual policies.

In the 2025 survey, “food and restaurant exploration” ranked first among visitors’ reasons for choosing Busan as a destination, at 68.8 percent. In response, the city produced the 2026 Busan Michelin Guide and distributed it at major tourism hubs, while also developing a series of culinary tourism programs, including gourmet selections and a pork and rice soup festival, thereby translating survey findings into tourism policy.

The survey is being conducted by ST Innovation Co., Ltd., a professional research company. Surveyors will meet tourists in person at major gateways, including Gimhae International Airport and Busan Station, as well as at major tourist attractions such as Haeundae Beach, Gamcheon Culture Village, Jagalchi Market, Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, and Taejongdae Resort Park, and conduct one-on-one interviews.

Survey participants are domestic and international tourists aged 18 or older who reside outside Busan. The survey covers all aspects of travel in Busan, including travel characteristics such as number of visits, length of stay, accommodation, transportation, and travel companions; trip planning and sources of information; places visited and tourism activities; spending patterns such as expenditures, payment methods, and shopping; and trip evaluations, including satisfaction, inconveniences, and intention to revisit.

Beginning this year, the city has increased the sample size from 1,200 domestic and 1,200 international tourists last year to 1,800 in each group, an increase of 600 respondents per group. For group travelers, only one representative is permitted to respond, preventing duplicate responses and further improving the accuracy and reliability of the survey.

Survey locations were also selected in preparation for seeking designation as nationally approved statistics, taking into comprehensive consideration the number of tourists, types of tourism, and tourism zones. In particular, representative attractions such as Haeundae Beach, Gamcheon Culture Village, and Jagalchi Market were included to improve the representativeness of the survey.

The city plans to analyze the survey findings in conjunction with tourism big data, including mobile telecommunications and credit card data, to gain a multidimensional understanding of visitor behavior and spending patterns and increase the findings’ usefulness for policymaking. The analysis results will be made available through the Busan Metropolitan City website at https://www.busan.go.kr and the Public Data Portal at https://www.data.go.kr.

In particular, to hear firsthand perspectives from international tourists that are difficult to capture through questionnaires alone, the city has also been conducting one-on-one in-depth interviews with 30 international tourists visiting Busan from August 22 through today, August 24.

The approximately 30-minute interviews are being conducted at major tourist attractions, including Haeundae Beach, Gamcheon Culture Village, and Seomyeon, with visitors of various nationalities, including those from Taiwan, China, Japan, and the United States. The interviews explore in depth why they chose Busan, what they find uniquely attractive about the city, and any inconveniences they experienced during their trips.

Through the in-depth interviews, the city plans to closely identify inconveniences experienced during actual travel and areas where improvements are needed, and to link these findings with the survey results so they can be actively reflected in improvements to the tourism environment and in policies that visitors can tangibly experience.

Mayor Chun Jae-soo said, “The voices of tourists themselves are the starting point for tourism policy. We will closely examine what visitors see and eat, where they go, and what they find inconvenient, strengthening Busan’s advantages as a tourism destination while addressing areas that need improvement.”

He added, “We will faithfully incorporate the findings of the survey and in-depth interviews into tourism policymaking and make Busan a tourism city that visitors will want to return to.”