New York Times Travel Show North Korea Tours Exhibit

Uri Tours was the first tour agency to exhibit North Korea tours at the New York Times Travel Show. We were surrounded by our East Asian neighbors including national tourism boards from South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, regulars at travel shows around the U.S. But people were very surprised to learn that U.S. citizens can in fact travel to North Korea and that there are no travel restrictions imposed by either government on DPRK travel by Americans.

We stirred quite some excitement among travel aficionados. Word spread quickly throughout the Jacob Javits center that there was a North Korea tour agency at the show. It also helped that we were raffling free custom designed T-Shirts every hour and that people decided to wear them at the show!

What we learned is that once people knew they were allowed to visit, that there was a lot of interest in DPRK tours. We were asked common questions such as, “Is it legal to visit North Korea?”, “Is it safe?” and “What is there to do there?”. It became apparent that not many people knew anything about the country (other than the usual nuclear weapons and food crisis), not even about the Arirang Mass Games. But they wanted to know and kept us engaged in conversation! We had a full staff and there were still people on line waiting to talk to us.

We also held a weekend-long raffle, our grand prize being a free trip for 2 to North Korea! We had over 600 eager entries and through random drawing, Charlotte J., an 8th grade math teacher from CT, won!

All in all, it was a great show for Uri Tours. We met some fabulous people, engaged in highly interesting conversations, gave away 2 free trips to North Korea and had a lot of fun! We hope you’ll visit us at our next travel show, to be announced.

Filed under: Uncategorized | January 21, 2013