A Study on Changes of Tourism Trends and Issues to Meet the Needs of Mature Market on the Basis of Adopting Social Tourism into Korean Tourism Market

This study is intend to discover how underlying travel motives and values could usefully identify unique senior tourism markets for the purpose of new product development as well as suggest effective government policies on senior tourism in Korea. In this study, interviews of 225 seniors who are over 50 years old on their motives for holiday travel, preferences for holiday destinations, favorite mode of travel, personal values, perceptions of government social tourism policy and other social tourism related issues were conducted. The researcher conducted the survey in several different areas of Seoul, Busan, and Gyungsangnam-do. The survey was distributed and interviewed to broader age ranges from 50 years old. In addition, the survey took a place from 9th to 24th April, 2007 and person to person interviews were used to increase response rate. The results show that seniors are needed to improve their quality of life by taking enough leisure time. Therefore, the government needs to concern more on enforcing effective and appropriate policies and regulations on social tourism for seniors to move into more mature society.