According to a latest report, "interpreting," "taxi" and "Seoul" are the most mentioned keywords on the 1330 travel helpline mentioned by tourists. The photo shows international tourists on the morning of May 21 having fun while riding a city tour bus in Seoul. (Yonhap News)

By Kim Seon Ah

"Interpreting," "taxi" and "Seoul" are the three most mentioned keywords by international tourists who used the 1330 travel helpline, according to a report.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism published the report on trends in using the 1330 travel helpline by analyzing 240,000 data collected by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) from January last year to May this year.

According to the report, "interpreting" was mentioned most at 3,583 times, ranking top for two years in a row, followed by "taxi" (3014), "Seoul" (1579), "hotel" (1149) and "bus" (1023).

By sector, "bus" was the most mentioned in the transportation sector.

KTO explained that the analysis by sector can differ from the analysis of the mentioned volume because the ranking reflects the purpose of using the service.

According to the report, the number of inquiries increased 25% year-on-year on how to use transport from airports or terminals to travel destinations, and the use of transportation cards. This shows that the travel patterns of overseas tourists have been individualized and segmented. 

In the area of shopping, "refund" was mentioned the most. The report showed that the mentioned volume jumped 27.5% from the same time last year, hinting at the need to expand the service of providing information about tax refunds and immediate tax refunds.

The 1330 travel helpline is a service that provides tourism information and interpreting via telephone or text messages. Currently, it provides services in eight languages – Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian.

sofiakim218@korea.kr