Luxury hotels and conveniently-located wedding halls are highly popular among the soon-to-be married couples in South Korea while conventional wedding venues are facing deepening management crises amid declining marriages.
According to data from the National Tax Service on Sunday, the number of wedding venues that were open stood at 733 at the end of last year, down 29 percent from 2017.
The primary reason behind this decline is the reduction in marriages, which stood at the 190,000 range in 2022, down from 260,000 in 2017.
Several major hotels in downtown Seoul, on the other hand, are enjoying a prosperous period, with wedding bookings already closed for this year.
“This year’s reservation rates for weekends and Friday evenings are already at 80-90 percent,” said an official from a luxury hotel in Seoul. “Apart from off-peak hours or occasional cancellations, reservations are fully booked for the entire year.”
Hotels like Shilla, Lotte, and Walkerhill have always been fully booked during peak season, but the trend has accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lotte Hotel Seoul saw nearly double the number of wedding bookings last year compared to 2018. The price of a wedding