Seoul promotes tourism, investment on G20's platform
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A South Korea coast guard hovercraft patrols on Han River near the venue of the upcoming G20 Seoul Summit in Seoul November 8, 2010. [Xinhua/Reuters Photo] |
Big banners bearing the summit logo can bee seen on major landmarks from the airport to downtown shopping malls. Even non-English-speaking taxi drivers can recognize the sound of "G20."
As host of the coming G20 summit, the proud Seoul is all geared up for holding the high-profile event and promoting its tourism and foreign investment.
Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon told reporters Tuesday at the G20 summit media center that the G20 Summit offers a good opportunity to make Seoul better known to the world and promote tourism and foreign investment in the city.
The government is making all efforts to build a "truly global city," not only a city foreigners want to visit, but also a place where they want to invest and live, he said.
Seoul is a famously expensive city to tourists. But with the government's efforts, it is the 50th expensive city in the world, down from the third in the past, according to Oh. In COEX, a central business area where the G20 Summit venue is located, a set meal at a food court costs about 7,000 won (6.3 U.S. dollars).
To attract more visitors, the mayor said more hotels tailored to visitors' needs will be built, including affordable hotels and youth hotels.
Besides, the government is set to increase taxi fleet and build easy-to-read street signs in a variety of languages. But a tourist, if not a good map-reader, may be easily lost in the city, because most of the signs and notices bearing curious Korean characters are yet to be translated.
The Seoul government is also committed to brand marketing. Its budget for brand marketing was increased from 5.3 billion won in 2007 to 33.9 billion won (30.5 million U.S. dollars) last year.
With these efforts, the city receives an increasing number of foreign tourists and confident of receiving more.
The mayor said Seoul can be reached by 43 megapolises. Among the multinational corporations in South Korea, 250 are included in the world's top 500 enterprises.
To create a "investor-friendly" environment, the government tries to provide one-stop-service for investors as well as support in capital, office space, employment and tax incentive for FDI ( foreign direct investment)-related activities.
The city has also designated cheap business areas for foreign investment, such as digital media city and Megok R&D city.
The G20 Seoul Summit will be held on Nov. 11-12, with the participation of top leaders from the 20 major advanced and emerging economies and several invited organizations as well as about 4,000 accredited journalists.
As the first Asian city to host the G20 Summit, Seoul has also organized six sightseeing tours for the international journalists to show the city's natural landscape, cultural preservation, design properties and hi-tech development.
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