FUKUOKA (Kyodo) JTB Kyushu Corp. and South Korea's top travel agency, Hanatour Service Inc., signed a tieup agreement Tuesday to increase bilateral tourism.
The JTB unit aims to profit from the growing number of South Korean visitors to Japan by providing easier access to popular tourist spots and marketing new packages for customers traveling by themselves instead of in groups.
Until now, the travel packages available for South Koreans have been mostly group tours.
Also Tuesday, JTB Kyushu, a group firm of travel agency JTB Corp., began marketing a bus tour for South Korean visitors whose itinerary will include Huis Ten Bosch, a Nagasaki Prefecture-based theme park depicting a replica Dutch town, and the Kurokawa hot spring resort in Kumamoto Prefecture.
While more South Koreans are visiting Japan, the number of Japanese travelers going to South Korea has been falling, after peaking in 2004, due to a weak yen and also because the popular craze over South Korean films and TV dramas has somewhat subsided, according to JTB Kyushu.