Dongseo University Division of Tourism MICE Centum Industrial Campus Development Project Team (Director Hong Jung-hwa) and Techtree Company (Representative Kim Seong-min) have installed an automated facial recognition device at the Hwangnyeongsan Observation Point, which is drawing attention from the tourism industry. The result of joint industry-academic research for the past three years, the device was installed at the popular tourism spot in May.

For the development and installation of this automated facial recognition device, both organizations signed an agreement on technology utilization with the Busan Tourism Organization and the Busan-Ulsan branch of the Korea Tourism Organization. This culmination of the venture marks the beginning of the installation of a number of similar devices at other popular tourist locations, in order to collect statistical information and share tourist information and promote cooperation for additional tourism marketing.

The existing automatic devices installed in tourist destinations did not solve the problem of overlapping counting when measuring the number of tourists. In contrast, this new device utilizes a system developed to link head counting with additional facial recognition technology to avoid that issue.
In addition, the system recognizes the sex or age group of visitors, from which the accumulated big data provided will be invaluable for establishing future marketing and tourism strategies.

Currently, Hwangnyeongsan Observation Point is operated by the Busan Tourism Organization, and the historical Hwangnyeongsan Fire Beacons site there has been selected as one of the top 100 nightly tourist attractions in Korea by of the Korea Tourism Organization, and is an important tourist resource that will be intensively promoted in the future. With the installation of this automatic facial recognition device there, it is now possible to accurately ascertain the number of tourists visiting there in realtime, as well as their sexes and ages.

Project Director and DSU Division of Tourism Dean Hong Jung-hwa said of the occasion, “It is very encouraging to install this automated facial recognition device at the Hwangnyeongsan Observation Point, a popular tourist spot which is very symbolic and representative of Busan, as the Ulsan Bridge Observatory is of Ulsan.”
He emphasized. “I very much expect it to contribute greatly to the local and national tourism industries in that it provides important big data for public relations marketing of tourist attractions in the Busan and Ulsan regions.”