High prices and general wedding halls also bear costs

Although general wedding halls are experiencing financial difficulties due to the decline in the marriage population, demand for luxury hotels and some wedding halls with convenient transportation has increased significantly.

Small and medium-sized wedding halls in provincial areas have been closed, and the trend toward high-end weddings is accelerating as the prospective newlyweds' mentality that they want to hold special wedding events even if they are expensive is combined.

According to data from the National Tax Statistics Portal on the 17th, 733 wedding halls were open in Korea at the end of last year, and 299 (29%) disappeared in six years since 2017. The main reason is that the absolute number of marriages has decreased. The number of marriages, which exceeded 260,000 in 2017, fell to 190,000 in 2022.

On the other hand, some major hotels in Seoul are booming enough that wedding reservations have already been closed this year. An official at a luxury hotel in downtown Seoul said, "This year's reservation rate is already 80-90% at the time when ceremonies can take place, such as weekends and Friday evenings," adding, "We are fully booked for a year, except for some off-season times and the number of reservation cancellations that occur occasionally."

Luxury hotels such as Shilla, Lotte, and Walkerhill were previously fully booked during the peak season, but the trend is accelerating through the COVID-19 period. During the pandemic, weddings were canceled or reduced one after another, making it difficult to catch the remaining hotels and large wedding halls due to the closure of a large number of small and medium-sized wedding halls.

Lotte Hotel Seoul has about doubled the number of wedding reservations last year compared to 2018. A hotel official explained, "The number of small weddings increased first immediately after the pandemic, and recently, large weddings with more than 200 people eating are increasing, and sales are also increasing further." Shilla Hotel also said, "The ceremony is an atmosphere in which most of the time is being booked."

The use of the main five-star hotel's restaurant starts at tens of millions of won. A luxury hotel in Seoul is known to use a wedding hall for at least 100 million won (based on 400 guests). An official of the hotel said, "If the option is the most basic, it is possible from the mid-90 million won range," adding, "It goes up to 250 million won depending on various options such as flower decorations and meals."

Last year, Banyan Tree Club & Spa Seoul in Namsan, Seoul, launched a large outdoor swimming pool wedding worth about 300 million won (based on 150 guests) under the concept of a luxury wedding and actually sold the product.

Because of this trend, the hotel industry is expanding wedding products such as banquet halls. The Seoul Dragon City Hotel in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, has increased wedding products four times since its opening in 2017 and is scheduled for this year. In 2021, during the pandemic, it also launched outdoor terrace weddings (200 people) and 31-story skyscrapers (150 people), and in 2022, it opened an additional dome-shaped small banquet hall called "Rendezvous," adding 370 weddings. This year, we are planning to launch additional outdoor wedding products.

In Seoul Dragon City, the number of weddings booked this year has already increased by 30% from the total number last year. Compared to 2018, it is 2.4 times higher. "The demand for weddings has increased since the end of the pandemic, and we have launched new wedding venues and products to strengthen our position in the wedding market," the hotel said.

The wedding hall industry believes that the overall increase in premium demand, the slight narrowing of the gap between luxury weddings and general wedding halls due to high prices, and the ease of service use and accessibility of large hotels have affected it. In other words, many people prefer the hotel because the accessibility of guests and the quality of meals are guaranteed, and the wedding time is guaranteed to be more than three hours.

The price of general wedding halls also rose significantly due to rising prices. A wedding hall in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, raised the cost of renting a hall and decorating flowers by 1 to 2 million won compared to before the pandemic, and also raised the price of meals from 70,000 won to 90,000 won per person. As of this year, wedding expenses are often priced between 30 million won and 40 million won. An official from the wedding hall industry said, "In general wedding halls, the price of meals is close to 100,000 won, and tens of millions of won are spent overall, so the demand for hotels with better environment has increased."

Park Hongju