City focus
Busan
in numbers
1: BEXCO hosting a big 2: A shot of the 3: Down by the
bank AGM in 2018 BEXCO exterior river in Busan
• In 2017 Busan held 267
exhibitions, with 2,500,000
visitors
• The G-star annual gaming
exhibition draws up to 200,000
visitors as the city is the hub of
South Korea’s gaming industry
• International Busan Contents
Market is visited by 60,000
people a year. (Busan was
designated as Creative City of
Film by UNESCO in 2014.)
• Busan is the 11th safest city in
Asia according to Mercer
• Busan is a design hot spot
and also known as Film Town
because of its film festival
• The Busan airport expansion
will connect the city to 100
cities by 2026 and handle 40m
passengers a year
• The city offers 55,000 hotel
rooms and two convention and
exhibition centres
environment safer.
BEXCO has developed a
smartphone application (Smart
BEXCO) that uses Bluetooth beacons
to provide visitors, organisers and
exhibitors with a variety services.
The venue also introduced a smart
parking system that allows visitors
to get information on parking
availability in advance before
arriving at the parking lot.
In terms of challenges affecting
future growth of the Busan exhibition
industry, the need to build up more
direct international flights into the
city figures high. Expansion of the
main airport should help this process.
Busan also offers some unique venues including F1963,
an old factory renovated into a cultural complex; the
Busan Cinema Center, able to host 5,000 outdoors and 900
indoors for events; the venue for the 2015 APEC Summit,
Nurimaru APEC House with its stunning sea views, and
also The Bay 101, a chic centre specialising in car launches
and glitzy events. These are just a few of the more than 40
unique venues promoted by the city CVB.
Of course, the rate of development of the trade fair and
MICE sector will also not be possible without long-term
support from Busan Metropolitan City authorities and
the depth and speed of that support will likely depend
to a large extent on the political backdrop provided by
relations between North Korea and with China.
The banning of trips by Chinese tourists to South Korea
was illustrative of the negative
dimension at play here.
Ongoing competition from
Japanese, Chinese and fast growing
cities of Southeast Asia will provide
other major challenges for Busan,
but with South Korea’s aggressive
marketing post-Winter Olympics
and the interest generated by K-Pop
and the wider Hallyu cultural ‘wave’,
not to mention the innovation
provided by the country’s technology
corporations and start-ups, and
the Korean chemistry seems set to
produce even more value for event
organisers.
Additional reporting
from Miroslav Ronczak
28
Issue 1 2019
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk