South Korea’s Jeju Island taps NFT program to attract young tourists: report

Jeju Island, one of South Korea’s most-visited tourist destinations, plans to issue non-fungible token (NFT) tourist cards to visitors, in the second half of this year.

The NFT card program aims to attract and retain loyal visitors, especially among millennials and Gen Z South Koreans, to Jeju Island, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The island intends to provide travel subsidies or discounts on tourist attractions to visitors who hold the “digital tourism resident card” NFT, according to the report. Holders will also be able to bookmark the times and places of their visits and upload photos on a dedicated platform. 

Jeju’s regional government aims to develop the system for the NFT cards and platform within the first half of this year, and plans to launch it around September’s Chuseok holiday, which lasts three days. While the island has set a bold benchmark of issuing 100,000 NFT cards this year, the cards will only be issued to domestic travelers.

Oh Young-hoon, the governor of Jeju, said in March last year that NFTs can be used in diverse applications, such as tourism and the traceability of agricultural and livestock products.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Jeju has seen a decline in domestic visitors in three age groups — teens, those in their 20s and 30s, and those in their 40s and 50s — with only the demographic 60 and older showing growth, according to the Bank of Korea's local economy report. 

Moreover, the recent political instability and the Jeju Air flight 2216 tragedy have caused the number of visitors to the island to decline further, the Korea Economic Daily reported. Domestic tourism to Jeju declined by 7% year-over-year in the past month, with 946,451 visitors, according to the report.