Hanatour Service

Hana Tour is Korea's largest general travel agency, operating package tours alongside free independent travel (FIT) services such as flights and hotels, overseas subsidiaries, and domestic affiliates.

In the second quarter of 2026, total travelers reached 894,059 and package-tour users totaled 447,953, both down slightly year over year, while China and Japan package travelers rose 15% and 7% respectively even as Southeast Asia, Europe, and the South Pacific fell 15%, 8%, and 24%, reinforcing a shift toward short-haul demand.

Over the same period, FIT users including flights, hotels, and local tickets reached 2.586 million in the first half, up 20.4% year over year, continuing their growth trend.

Product premiumization also advanced, with mid-to-high-priced packages accounting for 33% of users and 55% of package gross merchandise value (GMV) in the second quarter, a record on a transaction-value basis.

In the past, Hana Tour expanded by directly operating businesses such as SM Duty Free, Centermark Hotel, and the tour-and-activity platform Mohaji, but it later streamlined its portfolio by divesting low-profit and non-travel businesses during the pandemic.

More recently the company has reversed course, making a strategic investment to raise its stake in the activity platform WAUG to as much as 15%, becoming the second-largest shareholder of running-travel startup Cltour, and acquiring a 16% stake in luxury car-themed travel operator PPT Tour, expanding its business portfolio through equity investments.

Through domestic travel subsidiary Webtour and inbound-focused affiliate Hana Tour ITC, the company is also building out its business targeting foreign visitors to Korea.

In the competitive landscape, ModeTour is the key rival, and the recent shift of ModeTour's controlling shareholder to Yanolja illustrates how online platform capital is increasingly entering the ownership structure of the travel industry.

Hana Tour's annual results have traced a clear recovery curve after the pandemic shock.

In 2022 the company posted revenue of KRW115.0 billion and an operating loss of KRW101.2 billion (operating margin of -88.0%), before turning profitable in 2023 with revenue of KRW411.6 billion and operating profit of KRW34.0 billion (margin 8.3%), and then peaking in owner net income in 2024 at KRW81.5 billion on revenue of KRW616.6 billion and operating profit of KRW50.9 billion (margin 8.3%).

In 2025, revenue declined to KRW586.9 billion, but operating profit rose to KRW57.6 billion (margin 9.8%), confirming a shift toward profitability-led improvement rather than top-line growth.

However, 2025 owner net income fell sharply to KRW31.9 billion, a decline attributed to one-off items booked in the fourth quarter, including provisions related to an affiliate and demolition costs for an aging Hana Tour Japan hotel.

On a quarterly basis, fourth-quarter 2025 operating profit reached KRW27.4 billion (margin 15.6%), the best quarterly margin since 2012, reflecting the Chuseok holiday peak-season effect and optimized advance ticket purchasing.

First-quarter 2026 revenue and operating profit rose 4% and 36.6% year over year respectively to KRW174.8 billion and KRW16.8 billion, with owner net income jumping to KRW22.8 billion, but the second quarter saw revenue fall 4% to KRW115.4 billion, operating profit drop 44% to KRW5.4 billion, and owner net income fall to KRW4.8 billion.

This reflects reduced bookings as fuel surcharge hikes and won weakness raised travel costs, compounded by the company's strategic price adjustments to ease the burden on customers, which lowered the revenue conversion rate.

Summed over the most recent four quarters (Q3 2025 through Q2 2026), revenue totaled roughly KRW588.8 billion and operating profit roughly KRW57.9 billion, indicating that while quarterly volatility has increased, the annualized profit level has broadly held.

Korea's travel industry is assessed to have suffered a weak business environment for three consecutive years. Analysts point to the 2024 TMON-WeMakePrice payment crisis and last year's policy uncertainty as factors that prolonged negative conditions for the industry's fundamentals.

In the first half of 2026, elevated oil prices and fuel surcharge hikes tied to geopolitical tension, combined with won weakness, continued to psychologically dampen outbound travel demand among Korean consumers.

Recovery signals diverged sharply by region, however: China benefited from visa-exemption policy and the release of previously suppressed demand, while Japan saw package traveler growth aided by yen weakness and expanded flight capacity.

In contrast, Southeast Asia, one of Hana Tour's core regions, faced demand pressure as airlines redeployed mid-to-long-haul capacity to shorter routes amid high fuel costs.

Rival ModeTour showed a similar pattern in package traveler trends, and the travel industry's ownership structure has been shifting, illustrated by online travel platform Yanolja recently becoming ModeTour's controlling shareholder.

While Hana Tour is seen as maintaining a rising market share on the back of its dominant market position, the timing and pace of the broader industry recovery remain the key variable for an earnings rebound.

Hana Tour formally appointed former Lotte Card CEO Cho Jwa-jin as its new chief executive following an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in August 2026, abolishing its long-standing CEO-board structure roughly six years after IMM Private Equity's 2020 acquisition and shifting to an executive-officer system that separates the board from management execution.

Upon taking office, Cho unveiled the mid- to long-term strategy 'Hana Tour Chapter 2,' built on three growth pillars: premium travel, inbound tourism, and AI-based digital innovation.

The first pillar, premium themed travel, aims to move away from a focus on expanding traveler volume toward raising repeat-purchase rates and customer loyalty through tailored products and after-sales services suited to customer preferences and travel companions.

The second pillar, inbound tourism, seeks to build a platform spanning before, during, and after a foreign visitor's stay in Korea by leveraging K-culture content such as medical and beauty tourism, performances, dining, and shopping, with a planned inbound-focused platform called 'Hop&Hop' combining domestic travel affiliate Webtour, inbound-focused affiliate Hana Tour ITC, and the payment network of activity platform WAUG, in which Hana Tour holds an equity stake.

However, the exact official launch timing for this platform has not yet been confirmed. The third pillar, AI, is intended to be applied across product planning, customer consultation, and targeted marketing to pursue both operational efficiency and hyper-personalized service simultaneously.

The company has not disclosed specific investment amounts, revenue targets, or execution timelines by business line, leaving the pace and scale at which the Chapter 2 strategy will show up in actual results as something to be confirmed through upcoming quarterly earnings.