• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.345-362
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• 2010

It is necessary to develop new competitive products under the world economic downturn. The medical tourism industry a good example and it has grown rapidly for last couple of years. This paper aims to investigate socio-demographic proxies of inbound medical tourists in Korea. In particular, the medical tourist behaviors are modeled by considering the factors such as acquisition process of medical tourism information, service level of medical tourism industry and the choice attributes. The results of this study are summarized that: 1) Moot inbound medical tourists are over 40-years old with professional occupation accompanied with families; 2) The information resources are mainly acquired from travel agents and WOM(Word of Mouth) such as friends and relatives; 3) Current problems are lack of various promotion channels and the competitiveness of medical coots; 4) The inbound medical tourists are not homogeneous but vary in different segments. The study suggests that various marketing strategies should be implemented for target market segments to promote Korea as a medical tourism hub.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.43-64
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• 2007

The study is examined to illustrate Korea's status in service trade, including travel deficit, outbound travel market, and inbound travel market. This research will also illustrate what factors generate the growth of travel deficit and suggest some alternatives to solve it even if government notes a steady increase in exports of cultural products and programs and entertainment services, driven by the Korean Wave sweeping across Asia. The study suggested some possible alternatives such as growth of travel balance, improvement of low image on Korean tourism, aggressive participation of government, strengthened role of Korean Tourism Organization(KTO), and appropriate control on overseas studies to lessen an increase of travel deficit. In addition, the study concluded, even if a tourism industry includes a higher multiplier effect, the spontaneous participation intention by Koreans themselves and the strong supports from local governments should be another major successful factors to settle down the travel deficit.

• 한국항공우주법학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.19-30
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• 2008

This paper is intended to identify the main problems for attracting inbound tourists in Korea in conjunction with aviation sector. This paper mainly deals with policy issues of tourism-aviation sector. The major impediments in the aviation sector for attracting inbound tourists can be lack of flight seat supply at peak season, flight time schedule, and cooperation of Airlines. Policy suggestions for international tourism promotion in Korea can be summarized as: re-adjustment of flight time schedule between Japan-Korea routes, market promotion for attracting Chinese visitors, development of Korea-China-Japan triangular tourism product, efficient provision of airport facility, and in particular collaboration between government sectors of countries and private sectors of Airlines and travel agencies.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.143-156
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• 2002

Tourist Information Center has been played an important part of role in the promotion of tourism for both inbound and domestic market. The purpose of this paper is to examine the situation of our tourist information centers in context with information and personnel service. As a result we suggested some findings. According to studies, tourism information provided by TIC is critical and decisive for specific travel type and leisure travelers visit TIC more often than the other types of travelers. The specific aspects of tourism information is accuracy and currency which based on the characteristics of intangibility and perishability. According to this encouragement tourism information system should have to shifted to internet basis. This movement enabled tourism industry to make the atmosphere for portal or hub site for the effective operation of this system. The regionally networked system can make it possible to cope with some characteristics of tourism products. Reservations and information retrievals are major function of portal site. The data from suppliers (hotels, restaurants, event organizers, transportation, attractions etc) must be up-dated, controled by regional TIC and the connections should be extended among the regional TICs.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.155-175
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• 2017

As social data become into the spotlight, mainstream web search engines provide data indicate how many people searched specific keyword: Web Search Traffic data. Web search traffic information is collection of each crowd that search for specific keyword. In a various area, web search traffic can be used as one of useful variables that represent the attention of common users on specific interests. A lot of studies uses web search traffic data to nowcast or forecast social phenomenon such as epidemic prediction, consumer pattern analysis, product life cycle, financial invest modeling and so on. Also web search traffic data have begun to be applied to predict tourist inbound. Proper demand prediction is needed because tourism is high value-added industry as increasing employment and foreign exchange. Among those tourists, especially Chinese tourists: Youke is continuously growing nowadays, Youke has been largest tourist inbound of Korea tourism for many years and tourism profits per one Youke as well. It is important that research into proper demand prediction approaches of Youke in both public and private sector. Accurate tourism demands prediction is important to efficient decision making in a limited resource. This study suggests improved model that reflects latest issue of society by presented the attention from group of individual. Trip abroad is generally high-involvement activity so that potential tourists likely deep into searching for information about their own trip. Web search traffic data presents tourists' attention in the process of preparation their journey instantaneous and dynamic way. So that this study attempted select key words that potential Chinese tourists likely searched out internet. Baidu-Chinese biggest web search engine that share over 80%- provides users with accessing to web search traffic data. Qualitative interview with potential tourists helps us to understand the information search behavior before a trip and identify the keywords for this study. Selected key words of web search traffic are categorized by how much directly related to "Korean Tourism" in a three levels. Classifying categories helps to find out which keyword can explain Youke inbound demands from close one to far one as distance of category. Web search traffic data of each key words gathered by web crawler developed to crawling web search data onto Baidu Index. Using automatically gathered variable data, linear model is designed by multiple regression analysis for suitable for operational application of decision and policy making because of easiness to explanation about variables' effective relationship. After regression linear models have composed, comparing with model composed traditional variables and model additional input web search traffic data variables to traditional model has conducted by significance and R squared. after comparing performance of models, final model is composed. Final regression model has improved explanation and advantage of real-time immediacy and convenience than traditional model. Furthermore, this study demonstrates system intuitively visualized to general use -Youke Mining solution has several functions of tourist decision making including embed final regression model. Youke Mining solution has algorithm based on data science and well-designed simple interface. In the end this research suggests three significant meanings on theoretical, practical and political aspects. Theoretically, Youke Mining system and the model in this research are the first step on the Youke inbound prediction using interactive and instant variable: web search traffic information represents tourists' attention while prepare their trip. Baidu web search traffic data has more than 80% of web search engine market. Practically, Baidu data could represent attention of the potential tourists who prepare their own tour as real-time. Finally, in political way, designed Chinese tourist demands prediction model based on web search traffic can be used to tourism decision making for efficient managing of resource and optimizing opportunity for successful policy.