[Edaily Kang Gyeong-rok Travel Reporter] In the wake of a stock market correction, share prices across the domestic tourism sector fell across the board last October. Even the airline and car rental sectors—which had been the only ones to post gains in September—turned bearish, causing the overall tourism stock index to decline more sharply than the KOSPI index.
According to the “Tourism Industry TS-30 Stock Price Trends” report released by the Korea Culture and Tourism Research Institute on the 13th, the TS-30 index closed at 86.84 at the end of October, a sharp drop of 18.8% (20.06 points) from the end of September (106.90). This decline was 2.6 percentage points steeper than the KOSPI’s drop over the same period (16.2%, from 6,838.04 to 5,730.74). The TS-30 is an index that tracks changes in the market capitalization of 30 major tourism and related listed companies, with a base value of 100 as of January 3, 2022.

All six sub-sectors experienced declines. The sectors with the largest drops were theme parks (-28.3%) and duty-free shops/wholesale and retail (-20.1%). These were the only two sectors whose declines exceeded the KOSPI’s rate of decline. The theme park index, which includes not only the operator E-World but also Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Korea Comprehensive Technology, was significantly affected by the slump in the construction and engineering sectors. The Duty-Free and Wholesale/Retail index, which includes Shinsegae and Hyundai Department Store, has seen a cumulative decline of 30.6% over the two months since late August.
The Airlines and Car Rental index, which was the only one to rise the previous month, turned downward after just one month. It climbed from 92.53 at the end of August to 103.93 at the end of September but plummeted to 87.33—a 16.0% drop—in October. The hotel (-12.6%) and travel (-6.2%) sectors continued their downward trend for two consecutive months, though they held up better than the KOSPI. The casino index, which includes Kangwon Land, GKL, and Paradise, fell by only 3.2%, posting the strongest performance among the six sectors.
Trading volume and market capitalization also shrank due to weakened investor sentiment. The daily average trading volume of stocks included in the TS-30 index in October was 7.73 million shares, a sharp 23.4% drop from the previous month. The monthly average market capitalization of the 30 listed companies also evaporated by 5.5 trillion won in just one month, falling from 43.2 trillion won in September to 37.7 trillion won in October.