Seoul will host a series of large-scale events next year that could draw as many as 1.52 million visitors. Yet more than 84% of the city's lodging rooms are already occupied on an average day, raising concerns that a room shortage could materialize during the events.
About 500,000 people are expected to register for the 2027 Seoul World Youth Day in August next year, including 400,000 from abroad and 100,000 from within South Korea, according to the tourism industry and the event's organizing committee on the 1st. Including attendees at the closing Mass, the figure could reach as many as 1 million.
Another 520,000 visitors, including 200,000 foreigners, are expected at "2027 Phenomenon," a K-culture festival to be held in December at Seoul Arena in Changdong and KINTEX in Goyang. Combined, the two events could draw up to 1.52 million visitors, 600,000 of them from overseas.
The problem is that Seoul's lodging market is already close to saturation. Seoul had an estimated 88,199 rooms in 2024 across hotels and condominiums, motels and inns, serviced residences, hostels and urban homestays, according to lodging data analytics firm Robin Company. With an average occupancy rate of 84.5%, only about 13,670 rooms sit empty on a typical day.
New supply is not coming quickly either. New hotel rooms in Seoul have been added at a pace of only about 1,000 a year since 2023. There is also no integrated data set showing how many additional guests the city can actually accommodate at a given time across hotels and other types of lodging, making it difficult to calculate supply and demand precisely ahead of major events, industry officials said.
The World Youth Day organizing committee and the Seoul Metropolitan Government plan to provide lodging and meals for about 500,000 people by using homestays, Catholic parishes, schools and gymnasiums. Still, the possibility of a shortage of hotel and guesthouse rooms remains once demand from accompanying family members, clergy and press — who must use commercial lodging — is factored in. Phenomenon alone is expected to draw 200,000 foreign visitors, concentrating lodging demand during the event period.
Industry officials say new hotel construction alone cannot meet a temporary surge of this scale, and that rules should be revised to allow greater use of existing facilities such as shared lodging, homestays and university dormitories. "Ahead of these major events, we need to put registration and safety standards in order and move quickly to review ways to use shared lodging and idle facilities that have been verified as safe," an official in the lodging industry said.
