Hawzah News Agency (Seoul, Korea) - This will be the third year of the annual Halal Restaurant Week Korea promotional event since its first launch in 2016. The event was designed to give price discounts and other various benefits to foreign tourists including Muslims when they visit Muslim-friendly restaurants designated by KTO, major tourist attractions, and experience programs.

Halal Restaurant Week Korea is not only an ordinary discount promotion for foreign visitors, but also an intensive public relations period on Korea's Muslim-friendly infrastructure. As a matter of fact, most Muslims visiting Korea have had difficulties due to the lack of the reliable restaurants which serve halal dishes or the food which they can enjoy with no worries. Therefore, KTO is trying to build up Korea's reputation as one of the Muslim-friendly destination by providing foreign visitors with information and various benefits from the trustworthy restaurants. 

This year a total of 147 partners (123 Muslim-friendly restaurants, 24 major tourist attractions and experience programs), 27 partners increased comparing to last year, will join this promotional event.

Therefore, foreign visitors including Muslims will be able to take the chance of getting price discounts and other benefits during the event period. 

KTO will distribute Halal Restaurant Week Korea coupon books through their major overseas branches located in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok, New Delhi, Dubai, Istanbul and Almaty. 

In addition, KTO will also host the 2018 Halal Food Festival, the kick-off event of the Halal Restaurant Week Korea, at Hall A in COEX in Gangnam-gu District, Seoul for three days from August 16 to 18. During the event, Muslim chefs' special cooking demonstrations and the cooking classes to learn how to make Korean-halal fusion food will take place as the main events.

During the same period, the Halal Trade Expo Korea, a halal industry trade exhibition, will be simultaneously hosted and a number of programs such as the business meeting for halal industry and cultural events will be prepared as well.  

KTO is unfolding various marketing activities to expand and diversify Korean inbound tourism market, paying attention to the strategic values of Muslim tourist market. According to the 2018 Global Muslim Travel Index, the estimated 1.8 billion Muslims around the world will record around 300 billion USD in travel expenses by 2026, emphasizing their strategic values especially for inbound tourism market of each country. Indeed, the number of Muslim visitors to Korea has been steadily growing up to around 990,000 in 2016, nearly 1 million. Their market share in Korean inbound tourism has grown steadily up to 6.5%. 

KTO is also trying to expand the infrastructure to attract more Muslims visitors such as the designated Muslim-friendly restaurants and the prayer rooms which are mostly installed at popular tourist attractions, transportation facilities and accommodations nationwide. To enhance the satisfaction of Muslim tourists' experience in Korea, they keep developing various specialized tour programs based on Korean culture and high-value-added contents such as K-Drama, K-Pop and medical tourism. Through these efforts, KTO seeks to realize its mid- and long-term goal of attracting more than 1 million Muslim visitors per year by enhancing awareness of Korea as one of the Muslim-friendly destinations in the world.