The moment of truth for any airline startup is usually in its third year. It is then that the industry makes or breaks its further commitment to mile-high business. It is a good thing then to hear that Jin Air and Air Busan, two budget spin-offs of Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, broke even late last year, about two years after launching their respective services. Jeju Air, the first budget airline to base its headquarters on the island, broke even for the first time last November after bleeding red ink for more than four years.
As of February 2011 five budget airlines fly to Jeju and supply more than one third of the total seats avail-able. On the popular Gimpo-Jeju route, the market share of budget airlines surpassed the 55-percent mark in January. The contribution of Jeju-bound routes to their domestic success is astounding. Last October, more than 73 percent of the 1.92 million domestic air passengers in Korea flew to Jeju.
“The number of Jeju-bound passengers has increased more than three-fold compared to the previous year, siphoning off nearly all of the additional seats supplied by low-cost airlines,” Jung Hoon Sik, a Jin Air flight-schedule manager, told a local daily.
The impact of the sudden surplus of seats on the ticket price of Jeju-bound flights is remarkable. On the Gimpo-Jeju route, long dominated by the duopoly of Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, no-frills airlines have started to offer far cheaper tickets. The price of a return ticket from Seoul to Jeju plummeted from as high as 200,000 won to 40,000 won (about US$38) within a year after the launch of the service. This crumbled the psychological barriers involved in traveling to Jeju for ordinary fliers. In early January, some 36,000 Jeju-bound tickets, offered online at 10,000 won per seat by Jeju Air, were sold out within a few hours after sales opened on the company’s Web site.
To ramp up the sales of extra seats to Jeju, budget airlines now tout the joy of casual travel to Jeju. Jeju is no longer only a destination for honeymoons or once-in-a-lifetime trips (they would stress in their promotional messages) but a scenic island perfect for a snap weekend excursion.
The blockbuster success of the Olle trails and other ecotourism activities were gifts from heaven for the airlines. Thanks in part to the lucky coincidence of popular eco-tourism and the success of no-frills airlines, the number of annual visitors to Jeju passed the 7.5 million mark last year, scoring some one million more visitors than the previous year.
Low-cost airlines have changed the very nature of domestic travel to Jeju. Knowing that they can always come back to the island without the burden of a hefty ticket price, Korean visitors who would otherwise only hop around the top tourist attractions for a few days have now started to look deeper inside the hidden parts of the island, discovering the subtle nuances of Jeju’s beautiful landscape, one that changes every season. As it turns out, the success of low-cost airlines and ecotourism is tightly intertwined with the cycle of bringing an ever-increasing number of visitors to Jeju.
Bigger, faster and cheaper
As Jeju’s air space becomes congested and a growing number of commercial aircraft try to access the limited parking slots at Jeju International Airport, the sea route from the mainland is fast becoming an attractive alternative. The number of sea-borne passengers to the island has increased by more than 20 percent every year since 2007 with the exception of 2009, when the global swine flu pandemic hit the nation’s tourism industry. Last year alone, sea liners transported some 2.3 million passengers to and from Jeju, about a 22 percent increase from the previous year.
Hoping to capitalize on the booming traffic to the island, sea liners are opening new routes and deploying bigger, faster and cheaper fleets. As the race to attract Jeju-bound visitors heats up, some local governments even considered deploying a super-fast WIG ship to edge out other competitors. This may lead to a cycle of ever-increasing sea-borne passengers to Jeju. The supply of tens of thousands of additional ferry seats also means that airline passengers can worry less about the chronic shortage of air seats, especially during the peak season for school excursions.
Leading the pack is the Orange, the high-speed ferry that runs between Jangheung and Seongsan. Over 100,000 seats were booked within just five days of JH Ferry launching the service, nearly selling out for July and August last year.
Propelled by water jets, the Orange cruises at 40 knots per hour, cutting down the journey time from the current five hours to less than two. The ferry also shaved off shipping costs for cars to as low as 96,000 won per return trip, less than half the price of competing services de- parting from Mokpo, Wando and Busan.
The sudden explosion of tourists coming through Seongsan port was a great boon for the local economy as well. Since the July launch of the Orange, the number of visitors to Jangheung has reportedly jumped from a mere 70 to over 1,000 a day, and shops and restaurants in Seongsan saw their revenue increase by 30 to 50 percent. Every time the Orange arrives at Seongsan port, scores of taxies line up at the terminal’s taxi stand to pick up passengers.
With word about the merits of traveling by high-speed ferry to Jeju spreading to other travelers, some local governments on the mainland are considering opening up more routes from their cities to Jeju.
Pyeongtaek City will launch a 15,661-ton ferry to Jeju this month. Two additional high-speed ferry services will be launched later this year by other municipal governments. Wando-gun and Gunsan City have gone even further —they aim to beat competing ports by deploying a WIG ship that can cruise at up to 250 kilo-meters per hour.
Dubbed the “bullet train of the sea” for its potential application to high-speed commercial maritime transportation, the WIG ship can fly near the ocean’s surface by relying on aerodynamic interaction, known as the ground effect, between the wings and the water. The lift gained by ground effect is much stronger than the lift of usual flights, enabling the craft to save as much as 50 percent of fuel compared to ordinary commercial airplanes.
Wando-gun is reportedly in talks with Hanil Express to deploy a 100-seat WIG ship on the Wando-to-Jeju route by next year. This will cut the journey time down to 30 minutes. Gunsan City also applied for a WIG ship license on Jan. 13. The City plans to launch two 50-seat WIG ships that will cut across the 360-km distance between Bieung, Gunsan and Aewol, Jeju in less than two hours.
Just as low-cost airlines have shifted the balance of travel to ecotourism on the island, the explosion of bigger and faster ferry services to Jeju has the potential to change the nature of holiday driving here and may even pose a long-term threat to the island’s rental car industry.
Liberated from the burden of rental car costs, travelers tend to stay longer on the island when they drive their own cars. Coupled with their reduced journey time at sea, the high speed ferries have the potential to increase the average number of nights that a traveler stays on Jeju.
Looking back, budget airlines and high-speed ferries are not just brand new transportation modes, but an agent of change for the island. In terms of the sheer number of new visitors every year to the island and the balance of travel shifting to eco-tourism, Jeju is going through some fundamental changes. <Jeju Weekly>
<Jean K. Min jeanmin@jejuweekly.comⓒ Jeju Weekly All rights reserved>
