The Evaluation of Cruiser Tourist Preference : The Case of Pan – Yellow Sea Port in Korea

Ⅰ. Introduction

Cruiser visitors to Korea is recorded to be 2.26 million and are composed of tourist of 748,947 tourists and crew of 296,929 in 2015. Cruise ships generally call at Jeju, Busan, and Incheon ports. This study aims to evaluate the preference of cruise tourist based on an evaluation model by choosing pan Yellow-sea Port including Incheon Port. First content of this study confirms the factors which decide the calling of the cruise by investigating the cruise tourists' needs of nearby vital ports and deciding factors of cruise liners for calling. After suggesting an evaluation model of tourist preference, the authors try to find the factors within “A” group and also “B” group which enable the attraction of more tourists and cruise, calling. This study conducted survey of cruise tourists calling at Incheon port for the cruise tourists' needs and performed interviews of staff of cruise liners with their sales officers in Shanghai for the deciding factors of the port of calling.

Ⅱ. Calling Number of Cruiser in Pan-Yellow Sea

According to the cruiser tourist information, the tourists calling at Korean ports by country were 666,834 Chinese (88.4%), 33,634 Japanese (4.5%), and 10,691 Americans (1.4%), 42,986 from other countries (5.7%).

The number of cruise ship callings and tourists drastically increased temporarily in 2011 because cruise ships heading for Japan changed their courses to Incheon temporarily due to Fukushima nuclear reactor accident in March, 2011. In 2012, their courses went back to normal, showing a decrease again. After the 150,000-ton 'Costa Victoria' started to call at Incheon port in 2013, the number of tourists is on the rapid increase due to successive calling of large cruise ships from all of the world.

Among the cruise tourists calling at Inchon port in 2013 and 2014, Chinese tourists consisted of 95% and 92% respectively.

<Table 1>

Number of Cruiser Tourists and Calling Number in Pan-Yellow- Sea Port in Korea

Ⅲ. Questionnaire Survey on Cruise Tourists

This study conducted questionnaire survey with the cruise tourists who visited Incheon Port in August, 2016 regarding their duration of stay, purpose of trip, type of companions accompanying them, shopping destination, and interested themes. Out of a total of 200 questionnaires distributed, 134 questionnaires were collected (67%).

<Table 2>

Outline of Survey

As for the gender ratio of the collected 134 questionnaires, the number of females was 72 (54%) while the number of males was 62 (46%).

<Table 3>

Gender of Respondents

As for the ages, 51 visitors were in the age of 20~29 (38%) with greatest number while 33 were in the age of 30~39 (25%), 25 were in the age of 40~49 (18%), 21 in the age over 50 (16%) and 4 in the age of 10~19 (3%).

<Table 4>

Age of Respondents

For the duration of stay for cruise calling, 88 tourists(66%) stay for 5~10 hours, 17 tourists (13%) stay for 10~24 hours, 15 tourists(11%) stay for less than 5 hours, 14 tourists(10%) stay for more than 24 hours and 90% of the total respondents stay for less than 24 hours.

<Table 5>

Stay Time of Respondents

For cruise ship tourists' companions, 43 were with spouses/boyfriends or girlfriends (32%), 38 tourists(28%) were with friends/companions, 22 tourists(16%) were with parents/children, 17 tourists(13%) were Alone, 8 tourists(6%) are with brothers or sisters and 6 tourists(5%) were with relatives.

<Table 6>

Companions of Respondents

As for the purpose of the cruise tour, 59 tourists (44%) support travel itself, 30 tourists (23%) culture, Sightseeing, and experience, 22 tourists (16%) harmony and friendship, and 16 tourists (12%) the rest and relaxation.

<Table 7>

Purpose of Tour

As for cruise tourists' shopping places, 59 tourists favored duty-free shops (45%), 25 tourists(19%) favored department stores, 14 tourists (10%) favored traditional markets, 13 tourists(10%) favored the local products, 11 tourists(8%) enjoyed large supermarkets and 6 tourists(4%) souvenir shop and road shops.

For themes which cruise tourists are interested in when visiting ports of call, 32 visitors were interested in traditional/historical locations (24%)followed by 28 interested in gourmandism (21%), 27 indicatedinterested in shopping in department store/duty free shops (20%), 13 interested in local product shopping in traditional stores (10%), 12 interested in theme parks/aquariums (9%) and 6 in museums/galleries (4%).

As for inconveniences in the port of call during cruise tourism, 41 tourists indicated inconvenience of communication (31%) followed by 25 tourists who indicated unsatisfactory food (19%), 17 tourists chose uninteresting tourist destinations/schedules (13%), 12 tourists indicated unsatisfactory shopping environment (9%), 10 tourists who indicated inconveniences with money exchange (7%) and 8 tourists marked burdensome travel expenses (6%).

As for considerations in purchasing cruise tourism products, 35 tourists came up with tourism programs (26%), 24 tourists(18%) started the price of cruise price, 17 tourists(13%) indicated with services and programs onboard, 12 tourists(95) selected port of call and 11 tourists(8%) came up with convenience of entry and exit of national border.

This study also checked the problems and requests for Pan-Yellow Sea Port calls from cruise companies in August 2016.

① As there are no tourism products and tourist destinations around Pan-Yellow Sea region, most cruise tourists head to Seoul after they arrive at Incheon Port. Only when there are tourist attraction products such as large duty-free shops, facilities for cultural experiences and theme parks within 1 hours distance from Incheon port, half of tourists currently heading for Seoul can be accommodated around the region. Preferred courses was Gyeongbok Palace, Namsan mountain, Myungdong and duty-free shops. Most tourists complained about shopping tourism.

② Immigration management was confirmed to be somewhat satisfactory as it takes 1 to 1.5 hours to handle 4,000 people's passport scanning quickly after tourists arrive by receiving prior information of the tourists on board.

③ For visa issuance, although group tourists are able to receive a visa conveniently at one time, this option is not available to individual tourists, causing their complaints.

④ Although cruise tourists complained about the short time for sightseeing with only 8 hours to do so, nothing is done to improve the situation since there is no room for improvement. This study finds that a long-term stay is impossible due to cheap prices of cruise tours, which make it difficult to develop new programs.

⑤ Although necessity for development of various experience programs demanded by tourists is recognized, there are widespread perceptions among travel agencies in Korea that it is difficult to establish plans other than shopping-centered programs to make both ends meet

Ⅳ. Deriving Preference Lists of Cruise Tourists

This study selected candidate group from preceding studies and assessed them. The list of literature is presented in <Table 8>.

<Table 8>

The Strategy for Increasing Cruiser Tourists

According to preceding studies, the authors classified four subjects for cruiser strategy as follows:

① Improvement of tourism facilities and infrastructure facilities.

② Development of tourist products including accommodation, shopping, well-being, experience, entertainment, cultural and restaurant facilities while infrastructure facilities include transportation and wharf facilities.

③ Promotion can be classified into media promotion activities and promotion contents; promotions through media are promotion on pamphlets, mobile applications, magazines and TV while promotion contents consist of special discount products, tourism products, links with tourism services, experiential products, and cultural products.

④ Improvement of services includes interpretation, signboards, transportation, simplification of immigration procedures, tour guides, tourism information, and foreign exchange.

On view of preference of cruiser tourists, detailed preference of 44 items are derived shown in <Table 9>.

<Table 9>

The Classification of Cruiser Tourists Preference

Ⅴ. Evaluation Model of Preference of Cruiser Tourists

In order to assess priority it is necessary to investigate cruise tourists' preferences in choosing the products. When arriving at a port of call, tourists visit famous tourist attractions, such as city tour, experiencing, cultural legacy, shopping centers, traditional food restaurants and wellness tour.

According to the questionnaire the shopping place is chosen by 48.4% tourists, culture tour place is 28.63%, food tour place is 9.5%, sightseeing tour place is 15.65%, experience tour site is 1.92% and entertainment tour site is 0.93%. This preference is estimated to be mainly dependent on several factors such as stay time, tour price, gender, company, etc. This paper focuses on stay time at calling port to handle the preference of tourists.

As a starting point of developing an evaluation model, it is necessary to set a matrix to decide the preference as follows:

<Table 10>

Matrix Table for Evaluation Score

The 1st variable is defined as α(i,j) of the preference value, i of α(i,j) is the index of stay time, and the j of α(i,j) is index of preference site. The value of α(i,j) is expert's opinion.

Next, we set 2nd variable as β(j), which is the type of stay time, ie. under 10 hours, 10~24 hours or over 24hour. For the evaluation, we made a formula (1) as follows:

Using the above formula, we can evaluate the value for those under 10 hours stay time. Next, we can validate the accuracy of the model by a comparison of survey value and model value. The result is shown on <Table 11>.

<Table 11>

Accuracy Validation of the Model

Ⅵ. Evaluation Value of Preference Sites

Based on stay time, we establish the four scenarios: under 10 hours, 10~24 hours, over 24hours and mixed strategy.

(1) Scenario assumes that all tourists are given under 10 hours at a calling port. If stay time is under 10 hours, shopping and sightseeing are ranked higher rather than experience or culture tours. The evaluation rank of 10 preference sites are shown on <Table 12>.

<Table 12>

Evaluation Value on Under-10 Hours

If we extend the rank to 16 preference sites, shopping tour has dominant score, and culture tours have a higher score than any other sites as shown in [Fig. 1].

[Fig. 1]

The Score of Preference Sites Under 10 Hours of Stay

(2) Scenario 2 assumes that all tourists are given 10~24 hours at a calling port. The evaluation rank is shown on table 8. Compared with scenario 1, the casino is recorded at rank 7 due to utilizing night time.

<Table 13>

Evaluation Value on 10~24 Hours of Stay

If we extend the rank to 20 preference sites, culture tours like castles, traditional markets, festivals, art galleries, museums, etc are added in [Fig. 2].

[Fig. 2]

The Score of Preference Sites Under 24 Hours Stay

(3) Scenario 3 assumes that all tourists are given over 24 hours at calling port. The evaluation ranks are shown on <Table 9>. Compared to scenario 1, shopping, sighting seeing, food, and culture tours have higher scores than experience within 10 sites.

<Table 14>

Evaluation Value on over-24 Hours of Stay

If we extend the rank to 20 preference sites, experience tour like amusement parks, cycling, and water parks are added on [Fig. 3].

[Fig. 3]

The Score of Preference Sites Over 24 ours stay

Ⅶ. Study Results and Implications

In order to find the preference of cruise tourists, it is necessary to developed evaluation model. The model shows that the value derived from model is the same as survey preference. Using the model, we rank the preference sites in scenarios based on stay time at the calling port. If all tourists stay under 10 hours at the port, the most preferred sits, the shopping site, food sites, sightseeing sites, and cultural tour sites followed.

If more time but under a 24 – hour stay is given to tourists, the rank is changed a little The tourists like to enjoy casino games through the night.

If over one day of stay is given to tourists, they enjoy experience tours, like water parks, amusement parks and so on.

As mentioned in introduction, the response ration is 67%, total 134 tourists answered to the questionnaire. As this study has focused on designing preference model, and searching tourist preference with case study, research has limits for suggesting general theory.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Ministry of Ocean and Fishery Affairs.

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