By Israa Mohamed

Foreign visitors to Seoul through a new mobile app can make reservations at the city's leading restaurants even without a domestic phone number.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government on March 12 announced that it will sign a business agreement with Wad, a company that runs the restaurant reservation app Catch Table, to stimulate culinary tourism in the capital.

Offering online reservation and waitlist services to approximately 8,000 businesses nationwide including famous restaurants, the app used to be in Korean only. Its global English-language version launched in March last year, however, has data on some 1,500 businesses.

Under this agreement, foreign visitors can easily make restaurant reservations even if they have no domestic phone number. One can simply sign up for the app using an email address and enjoy the culinary experience in Seoul to their heart's content.

The city and Wad will also cooperate in other areas like devising ideas for boosting the capital's food culture; promoting food festivals in Seoul; marketing the global version of Catch Table; and improving tourist convenience by raising the number of businesses in the app's global version and that of users.

The agreement will have the city host joint promotional events such as Seoul Welcome Week (May 1-6) and Taste of Seoul (Nov. 8-14) to allow foreign enjoyment of the Seoul dining experience.

"Tourism satisfaction in Seoul by foreign visitors mainly depends on their palates," said Kim Young Hwan, director-general of the city government's Tourism and Sports Bureau. "We will continuously strive to improve tourism infrastructure to make Seoul an attractive city where people want to stay longer and visit again and again."

ess8@korea.kr