The room charge for this room is 500,000 won per night. It is similar to a five-star hotel in Jeju Island. Park said, “After my overseas trip was blocked by COVID-19, I enjoyed ‘Hocance (Hotel + Vacation)’ enough to enjoy it,” adding, “I chose it because my desire to stay in a new accommodation grew.”
Emotional accommodation, a term unfamiliar to the general public, is one of the topics that has emerged in the travel and lodging industries in recent years. The industry classifies detached house-style accommodation with a yard where outdoor meals are available as emotional accommodation.
It usually has an accommodation building that guarantees independence without encountering other groups and a lawn yard where you can enjoy barbecue while looking at an open view. It is popular among the MZ generation (Millennium + Z generation) because it is good to take a proof shot that is good to post on Instagram.
Emotional accommodation is so steep that it easily surpasses hotels, which are traditional powerhouses in the lodging market. According to market research firm EuroMonitor on the 11th, the market size of camping sites and detached pensions in Korea increased by 36.3% from 629.4 billion won in 2020 to 857.7 billion won last year. The growth is more than 10 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the five-star hotel market (25.3%) during the same period.
Until 10 years ago (2012), the emotional accommodation market, which was only 58.5% of five-star hotels (602.8 billion won), worth 353.2 billion won, has grown rapidly since 2017, reversing the five-star hotel market.
In particular, the COVID-19 incident is expected to give wings to the growth trajectory of the otherwise steep emotional accommodation market. This is because the demand for accommodation suitable for “work+vacation” has increased significantly as remote work spreads.
Another growth factor is that the MZ generation, which has enjoyed a hotel vacation for the past two years, has visited other types of accommodation. Seo Soo-min, a senior researcher at Euromonitor, said, “As more and more MZ generations want to experience difficulties in daily life, such as village vacation (village + vacation, accommodation in isolated rural areas), the market for emotional accommodation will also grow.”
It’s not even a hotel, but 500,000 won for one night…It was already full half a year ago. [Lee Mi-kyung’s Insight]
Emotional accommodation is mainly aimed at resting, such as workplaces, village vacations, and proof shots, for travelers to use the facilities. As such, the purpose of the trip is to use the accommodation. Emotional accommodation travel is different from the conventional travel conventional wisdom of deciding the area to go first and choosing accommodation accordingly.
According to the travel industry on the 11th, emotional accommodation, which is popular with young people in Jeju, Gangneung, Gangwon, and Yangyang, costs 200,000 won to 500,000 won per night, equivalent to a five-star hotel. Nevertheless, reservations are often closed as close as one quarter or as far as six months in advance. Han (32), who booked an emotional accommodation in Yangyang at the end of this month to enjoy the autumn foliage season, completed the reservation in April. Han said, “I was originally going to go in August, the summer vacation season, but when I looked into the accommodation around May, it was fully booked.”
This popularity is also evident in the data. In the “high-end pension” category within the Yanolja platform, the amount of transactions that occurred last year increased by 92% compared to the previous year. Yanolja explained, “The growth of the emotional accommodation market is so steep that companies are paying particular attention.” 제주도 펜션 추천
As those who wish to stay prefer a private atmosphere, most of the accommodations do not enter the large online travel agency (OTA) platform and operate only with their own Instagram accounts. A, who runs a hanok-type emotional accommodation in Gyeongju, said, “We introduce the facility through Instagram and receive inquiries and reservations,” adding, “We don’t feel the need to enter OTA because the vacancy rate is close to 0% throughout the year.”