Busan aims to become a city tourists stay longer and return to

Busan Mayor Jeon Jae-soo held a public forum titled "Stay-Oriented Tourism, Happy Busan" at the Eurasia Platform in Busan Station Monday afternoon, gathering workers from the city's food, accommodation, medical, wellness, MICE and cruise tourism sectors — along with residents of Gamcheon Culture Village — to discuss ways to improve the quality of Busan's tourism industry.

The forum was convened to chart a path beyond the city's record-breaking growth in visitor numbers — foreign tourist arrivals reached about 2.92 million through July, up 46.1 percent from a year earlier, while tourist spending totaled 742.3 billion won ($548 million), a 50.8 percent increase — and to explore how Busan can evolve into a destination where visitors stay longer and spend more.

Participants unveiled four strategic pillars under the vision of making Busan "an economically vibrant tourism city driven by experiential consumption": promoting balanced, stay-oriented tourism across the city's eastern and western districts; nurturing high-value-added tourism industries; building diverse content and improving global hospitality infrastructure; and creating a sustainable, mutually beneficial tourism ecosystem.

Discussions focused particularly on shifting the city's tourism policy away from visitor-count metrics toward qualitative indicators — length of stay, spending, satisfaction and return visits. Easing on-site regulations in the accommodation and dining sectors and expanding stay-oriented infrastructure were identified as key priorities. The city plans to extend the tourism axis beyond the eastern Busan concentration into the western districts and to draw visitors into longer stays through high-value sectors such as medical tourism, wellness and MICE.

Before the forum, Mayor Jeon visited the tourist information center at Busan Station — the city's main gateway — and encouraged staff at "Jimcarry," a luggage delivery service platform, while assessing the gateway's readiness to receive visitors. The city said it will use the occasion to fully remodel the Eurasia Platform at Busan Station into a welcoming hub for international tourists.

Plans call for installing digital kiosks in the Busan Station concourse and deploying foreign students and local residents as multilingual support staff along major visitor routes. The Eurasia Platform itself will be developed into a comprehensive tourism center combining tailored travel assistance, sales of the Visit Busan Pass and K-culture merchandise, and unmanned luggage storage — all aimed at improving convenience and satisfaction for international visitors.