Foreign Tourists in Busan Cite a Shortage of Public Trash Bins and Unclean Restrooms, but Are Satisfied with Tourism Content

[Financial News] Foreign tourists visiting Busan were generally satisfied with the city’s tourism content, but experienced inconvenience with tourism facilities, including a shortage of public trash bins and unclean restrooms.
The Busan Metropolitan City Government said on the 2nd that it reached this conclusion after conducting 30-minute in-depth interviews with 34 foreign tourists at major attractions, including Haeundae, Gamcheon Culture Village, and Yongdusan Park, from the 22nd to the 24th of last month.
Regardless of nationality, participants gave generally positive assessments of Busan’s tourism content, including its natural environment where the sea and mountains come together, its vibrant urban atmosphere, and its diverse culinary offerings.
In particular, they cited the kindness of local residents they met during their trips as Busan’s greatest attraction and a reason to return. This showed that Busan people themselves are a key tourism asset for the city.

By contrast, 25% of respondents said they had experienced inconvenience because Busan lacked public trash bins or because public restrooms were not clean.
Other complaints included transportation inconveniences, such as difficulties recharging transit cards and insufficient promotion of subway passes (18.8%); inadequate multilingual route maps and incomplete map translations (12.5%); payment difficulties, including the lack of credit card support (12.5%); and requirements for a Korean phone number or foreigner registration card, along with complicated reservation procedures (9.4%).
The findings also showed clear differences by nationality in the advantages and disadvantages tourists experienced in Busan, indicating the need for tailored improvements.
Tourists from Greater China showed strong interest in long-term stays, such as living in Busan for a month, and made specific requests concerning transportation, payments, and mobile services. They called for multilingual information on taxi reservations and vacant-taxi indicators, wider acceptance of WeChat Pay and Alipay, improved authentication systems for foreign users of public bicycles, and easier access to delivery and restaurant reservation apps.
Japanese tourists cited the cleanliness of public restrooms at tourist attractions, cigarette butts around restaurants, and sewage odors in the Seomyeon area as inconveniences.
European and American tourists pointed to the limited availability of Busan tourism information on Google Maps and the low awareness of the Visit Busan Pass among tourists as major inconveniences.
The city government plans to promptly share the inconveniences identified through the in-depth interviews with relevant departments overseeing transportation, the environment, and the economy, as well as with districts and counties. It will improve on-the-ground visitor services, focusing on tasks assigned to each authority. If the third supplementary budget passes the city council, the government will immediately address issues that can be resolved quickly, such as placing trash bins at major tourist attractions with support for districts and counties.
In addition, if the effectiveness of the survey is confirmed, the city government plans to make the in-depth interviews a regular program starting next year.
Mayor Chun Jae-soo said, "If we have focused so far on quantitative growth centered on the number of tourists, now is the time to pursue qualitative excellence. We will address and improve the finer details on the ground that quantitative data failed to capture, and create a Busan that people will want to visit again."
[email protected] Kwon Byeong-seok Reporter