Tourism expert luring more and more international meetings to Seoul


Last November the Seoul MICE Forum provided the Seoul Convention Bureau an opportunity to lure organizers of major international meetings to South Korea’s capital.

Maureen O’Crowley, the bureau’s vice president, recalls that the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions forum had kept everyone occupied, so much so that they were cut off from the news.

Then the cellphones started ringing. Those who’d come to hear why they should bring their meetings to Seoul were suddenly getting calls from their homes asking if they were okay. 

It was Nov. 23, the day North Korea launched its artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island, killing four people. Suddenly the bureau, part of the Seoul Tourism Organization, was in the position of having to reassure people that Seoul was a safe destination for future meetings.

The perception of danger is one of the biggest obstacles O’Crowley faces in promoting the capital, but this tourism industry veteran has more than one way of putting it into perspective. For one, she recalls taking trips decades ago to her mother’s hometown of Belfast. Those were the days of The Troubles ― the sectarian violence that plagued Northern Ireland for decades.

“When I would go home with her, people would say ‘Are you crazy?’ But you know what? Life goes on,” she says.

“I live here by choice and I do not worry about myself.” 

A magical time

This U.S. native’s Korean adventure started in Nebraska, a place very different from her current home. However, her family was in the Midwestern state when she was born for the same reason she would eventually find herself on the other side of the globe: Her father served in the U.S. Air Force.

The USAF tended to place servicemen in flat places such as Nebraska and Kansas “because that’s where they keep missiles,” she says.

Then in 1972, when she was in her early teens, her dad was stationed in Seoul. They received only about a month’s notice before they left, and he started preparing her and her two brothers almost immediately. Having previously been stationed in Okinawa, he taught them to use chopsticks, which they would use to practice eating peas every night.

Furthermore, he told them that they should always be observant.

“As a military man, that’s what he was trained to do,” she says. “So I paid a lot of attention during those two years.”

O’Crowley had a “magical time” here in those days, despite it being a very different Korea from the one today’s expats ― and even young Koreans ― know of.

There were far fewer cars, the subway was under construction and many of today’s most affluent neighborhoods didn’t exist in their current form. She finds the once-sparse neighborhoods of Gangnam and Yeouido, for example, unrecognizable in their current form.

“It’s been gradual but pretty phenomenal,” she says of Korea’s development.

“And now look at us; I can talk on the subway on a cellphone to the United States better than I can make a cellphone call in the United States.”

Furthermore, North Korea’s recent acts aren’t quite so startling now compared to those days. Among other things, in the ’70s North Korea actually made attempts on the South Korean president’s life.

“(The threat) was constant when I was here, and perhaps then it was more real,” she says.

After making many friends and a lifetime’s worth of memories, O’Crowley and her family returned to the U.S. in 1974. She would finish high school in California and start college. She’d expected that her high school days in Korea were a chapter of her life that had closed, but a couple of years after her departure, she saw an ad for a position at the Los Angeles branch of Korean Airlines.

“That’s when the thought occurred to me, ‘ah, if I get that job I can go back,’” she says. Contrary to her expectations, she would not go back during the year she worked in their public relations department, but this was her entry into the travel industry. After a year with the airline, O’Crowley started her own travel agency and struck up a partnership with a Korean agency. Later, they would start providing tours to the country she’d come to love.

Though Hong Kong was the popular place to go for shopping tours in the ’80s, she quickly found that customers loved coming to Korea for the same reason. Or rather, they did once they realized the option was available to them.

“People loved it when they got here,” she says. However, “there’s a general ignorance (of Korea) that prevails.”

Work to do

She understands why certain perceptions linger, particularly in North America. Most of the headlines appearing in the press linger on the rogue state next door and its nuclear program. The popularity of “M*A*S*H,” the long-running TV show set during the Korean War, has maintained the image of a war-stricken, impoverished nation.

More recently, she remembers meeting a 30-year-old woman from Sweden who was asked to write down the first thing she thought of when she heard the word “Korea.”

She wrote “war.”

After spending nearly 20 years operating her own agency, since 2006 O’Crowley has taken a greater responsibility in changing how Korea is viewed. It started when the Korea Tourism Organization’s L.A. branch asked her if she could recommend someone to serve as a marketing manager. O’Crowley, who had already been serving on the group’s advisory board, surprised them by recommending herself. She would serve in that role for two years.

“That’s when I really realized some of the obstacles that are in our way,” she says. Because she can read Korean script and speak a little of the language, “coming to Korea was always easy for me.”

“But when I looked at it from the other side that’s when I realized what we had to do.”

In 2008, the Seoul Tourism Organization was founded to promote the city’s convention and tourism industries. That summer, they contacted O’Crowley and asked if she’d be willing to join as senior director of the Seoul Convention Bureau. It would mean coming back to Korea to live more than 30 years after her high school days. It would mean confronting non-Koreans’ ignorance of the country on a regular basis and trying to change it.

She spent just one day thinking about it before deciding to go. Lest anyone question how committed she is to promoting the country, keep in mind that her husband, a Korean himself, would remain in the U.S. after she arrived in Seoul. Their four children do also, though they are all adults now.

“I feel strongly that I have something to offer this country,” she says. “We all love our own native countries, that’s supposed to be understood ... But when you have an American out there telling people about Korea I think it resonates and it gets their attention.

“I think my father served this country in one capacity and he trained me well to do so in another.”

Nine to five

The numbers since her arrival are promising. The job description for her bureau is to bring more international meetings to Seoul, so that the capital can gain the residual economic benefits.

When she started, the Union of International Associations ranked Seoul No. 9 as a destination for international meetings, in terms of how many the city had hosted in a year’s time. At the time they set the goal, a seemingly ambitious one, of reaching No. 5 by 2015.

They reached that target in 2010. This put Seoul ahead of cities such as Barcelona, Tokyo, Berlin and London, and behind only Singapore, Brussels, Paris and Vienna.

“The convention industry started in Europe, so we’re in some pretty good company,” she says.

Recent highlights include hosting the International Dragon Award, a convention for the Chinese insurance industry. There are two primary reasons why this was noteworthy: It was a two-year endeavor on the part of the bureau, and it was the first time the conference had taken place outside of a Chinese-speaking country. She largely credits this achievement to the bureau’s Chinese-speaking staff.

Next October, Seoul will host a convention for SKAL, the International Association of Travel and Tourism Professionals, something O’Crowley is particularly proud of because she is a SKAL member.

But O’Crowley, who was promoted to vice president of the bureau last year, says the work must continue. After all, now that the Seoul is ranked No. 5 they have to work just to maintain that ranking. Near the top of the group’s list will be doing more promotional efforts in North America and Europe, which have been less likely than Asian nations to see Seoul as a convenient destination.

And along the way, the group may just dispel some fears over North Korea. As one visitor from Scotland recently found, definitions of safety may vary.

“At one point (in our meeting) he ... said, ‘You know what I like about this city? It’s safe,’” she says. “Of course it’s music to my ears, but I asked him, ‘Why do you say that?’

“Because I see women walking by themselves on the street at night,” was his answer.

“Now there is firsthand testimony,” she says.

By Rob York (rjamesyork@heraldcorp.com)

Maureen O’Crowley

● 1972-74 ― Attended Seoul American High School

● 1976 ― Graduated Westminster High School in California

● 1976-77 ― Worked for public relations branch of Korean Airlines’ Los Angeles branch

● 1977-2006 ― Operated own travel agency based in Southern California

● 2002 ― Graduated from California State University with tourism degree

● 2002-06 ― Served on advisory board to Korean Tourism Organization’s Los Angeles branch:

● 2006-08 ― Worked as marketing manager for the Korea Tourism Organization’s L.A. branch

● 2008-10 ― Worked as senior director for the Seoul Tourism Organization’s convention bureau

● 2010 ― Completed master of tourism administration degree at George Washington University

● 2010-present ― Works as Vice President, Seoul Convention Bureau for the Seoul Tourism Organization