Ocean World water park theme park attendance South Korea 2013-2022

In 2022, the attendance at Ocean World water park in the province of Gangwon, South Korea, was approximately 750,000 people. This was an increase from the previous year, although less than figures recorded before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

South Korea water park visitors during COVID-19

With every water park in the Asia Pacific having experienced significantly lower attendance after the COVID-19 outbreak, South Korea was no exception to the rule. The number of visitors at Caribbean Bay had more than one million visitors annually, but this figure dropped drastically, to less than 20 percent, during COVID-19. Lotte Water Park, which usually had between 600,000 to 700,000 visitors, also recorded less than 100,000 attendees in 2021, a year after the pandemic outbreak.

Rapid recovery for tourist attractions

In the year of the COVID outbreak, Lotte World’s sales revenue decreased to approximately 124 billion won -- less than half of the average. Although many tourist spots experienced a decline in attendance during the pandemic, they got back to order quite quickly. Everland reached its lowest attendance records in 2020 but has since recovered with around six million visitors in 2022. A similar trend can be seen in the income of related companies. In response to the loosening of restrictions on crowd-based activities almost two years after the start of the pandemic, the tourist industry exploded. Seemingly trying to make up for lost time, people flocked to parks and other tourist attractions, resulting in Lotte World’s highest earnings in the past six years.