Busan Tourism Industry Gets a 'Green Light' for Its Fourth-Quarter Outlook, Too

[Financial News] With tourism in Busan enjoying an unprecedented boom, driven by foreign tourists, the outlook for the remainder of this year—the fourth quarter—is also expected to be favorable.
On the 13th, the Busan Tourism Organization (BTO) released its 2026 third-quarter survey of business conditions in Busan's tourism industry, based on responses from a total of 455 local tourism industry representatives.
The survey found that all Business Survey Index (BSI) indicators—including sales, profitability, and domestic and foreign tourists—remain above the benchmark of 100 for the fourth quarter, sustaining hopes for a recovery in the tourism industry.
By category, the fourth-quarter BSI forecasts were 119.3 for sales, 123.1 for profitability, 114.7 for domestic tourists, and 133.0 for foreign tourists. Compared with the previous quarter's forecasts, every indicator rose: sales by 7.9 points, profitability by 13.7 points, domestic tourists by 11.7 points, and foreign tourists by 4.3 points.
Among these, foreign tourists had the highest forecast, and were identified as a key factor that will drive Busan's tourism market at year-end.

For fourth-quarter sales, 38.5% of respondents expected an 'increase,' compared with 19.1% who expected a 'slowdown'; positive responses were at least twice as numerous as negative ones. For profitability, 38.9% expected an 'improvement,' up 8.1 percentage points from Q3, while just 15.8% expected a 'deterioration,' indicating growing expectations for improved profitability.
By contrast, 29.7% said staffing levels were 'insufficient,' a similar share to Q3. The top business difficulty was also identified as 'labor shortages and rising labor costs' (18.5%), indicating that staffing shortages remain unresolved.
In the outlook for tourist numbers, 46.4% expected an 'increase' in foreign tourists, far exceeding the 31.2% who expected an increase in domestic tourists, reflecting greater optimism about the inbound market. Conversely, the share expecting an increase in domestic tourists fell 5.7 percentage points from the previous quarter, while 52.3%—a majority—said numbers would be 'about the same.'
An official from BTO's Marketing Strategy Team said, "This survey found that all business indicators exceeded the benchmark of 100, with hopes for a recovery in the tourism industry carrying over into the fourth quarter as well." The official added, "We will continue support programs that reflect the industry's needs, including efforts to attract more foreign tourists, develop tourism content, and strengthen the competitiveness of tourism businesses, so that we can sustain a recovery that the industry can feel."
[email protected] Byeon Ok-hwan Reporter