South Korea garnered international headlines in the past few weeks after a short-lived martial law declaration, but there are signs the country's strong tourism draw will continue unabated.
On the latest episode of the Hotel News Now podcast, STR's Jesper Palmqvist said that geopolitical issues don't always show up in hotel performance immediately, and South Korea is likely to continue to see strong travel demand.
"Korea, this year and particularly the last six months, has been riding off that positive wave where things have been OK, where domestic travel in Korea has been good," he said. "The few Japanese that travel outside Japan ... they've been going to Korea, and obviously a lot of Chinese have been going to Korea."
Palmqvist said political turmoil arose in the country amid a backdrop of a strong start to the end-of-year travel season.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in the middle of the night on Dec. 3, a decision which was reversed by parliament six hours later. Parliament voted to impeach Yoon Suk Yeol 10 days later, then impeached acting President Han Duck-soo on Dec. 27.
"Before the political challenges that happened in Korea, you had early snowfall that gridlocked Seoul for awhile, and you had tourists coming to take these magical pictures," Palmqvist said.
The country has still maintained a lot of that momentum, though.
"Hotels have been performing the same way in the main markets in Korea in the last month. We haven't seen a change in that. And I think that's quite telling, that we don't usually see that super quick turnaround unless it is for a geopolitical issue that really matters, and that's not the case right now," he said.
To end the year in 2024, Palmqvist said the Asia-Pacific macro hotel performance trends continue, with strong markets such as Japan seeing good performance and weaker markets such as New Zealand continuing to lag.
"Generally, more of the same is how the year ended, which is not a bad thing" he said. The fourth quarter "did show some of that stability and less of the spikes in either direction."
For all of HNN's discussion with STR's Jesper Palmqvist, listen to the podcast above.