South Korea’s tourism competitiveness ranking climbed 10 places to 19th in a new travel and tourism competitiveness report for 2017 published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) from the last report released in 2015, mainly backed by improvement in the nation’s travel and tourism policy, according to the government.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced on Tuesday that the nation ranked 19th out of 136 countries in the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report released by the WEF, jumping 10 spots from two years ago. The report published every two years compares countries’ tourism competitiveness based on four sub-indexes, 14 pillars and 90 individual indicators.

Korea’s tourism competitiveness ranked 42th in 2017, 31th in 2009, 32th in 2011 and 25th in 2013.

The score of the nation’s travel and tourism policy and enabling conditions improved the most, jumping from 82nd to 47th over the same period, with that of infrastructure sub-index up from 40th to 27th and enabling environment sub-index from 28th to 24th.

Although the particulate matter concentration ranking climbed four places to 130th, it was the lowest ranking among the 90 indicators. Airport density came at 119th and attractiveness of natural assets at 124th.

Korea came out on top in the time required to deal with construction permits under the business environment index, and maintained its number one position in access to improved sanitation and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence index. The number of automated teller machines ranked the first from 36th in 2015. Index of terrorism incidence fell from 1st to 37th.

In the 2017 report, Spain, France and Germany remained in the top three tourism destinations from 2015. Japan climbed five places to 4th and China two slots to 15th.

By Shin Ik-su

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