When Mi Sun Song took the helm of HanaTour, she arrived as an outsider in almost every sense that mattered.
She wasn’t a career lifer from Korea’s traditional travel agency world. She wasn’t part of the old hierarchy. And she was stepping into a company long defined by scale, group travel and deeply ingrained ways of working.
Six years on, HanaTour looks like a very different organisation – not because it abandoned its roots, but because Song forced it to confront what still mattered, and what no longer did.
At WiT Seoul, Song spoke candidly about the most controversial calls she made, the period when results lagged belief, and why 2026 will mark HanaTour’s most consequential chapter yet
Killing the sacred cow: packages without shopping
The boldest early move was also the most culturally risky.
HanaTour’s “Pack 3.0”, an evolution from Pack 2.0, stripped out commission-driven shopping stops and optional upsells, refocusing group travel on immersion, local activities and experience depth.
Contrary to assumptions, the idea didn’t face resistance from within. As Song noted, “It wasn’t scepticism – everyone internally knew this was the direction we needed to go. We just hadn’t had the chance to start.”
For decades, shopping had underwritten margins. Removing it meant higher prices – in some destinations up to 30%, in others nearly double. Many in the industry had tried similar ideas before and abandoned them.
Song didn’t deny the risk. “The biggest side effect was price increases,” she said. “The question was how to persuade customers.”
The hardest period came between spring and August 2023, when HanaTour was effectively alone in market with this model, sales pressure was intense, and belief was being tested.
What sustained her wasn’t instinct – it was data.
Betting on patience, backed by proof
HanaTour doubled down on its customer satisfaction framework, tracking repurchase rates, guide performance, customer comments, photos and videos at a granular level.
The signal was clear.
Before the shift, HanaTour’s Customer Satisfaction Index sat at 77. After the rollout, it climbed to 86.87 – with Pack 2.0 and 3.0 products consistently outperforming legacy offerings
Still, Song wanted to feel it herself.
During Chuseok 2023 (Korea’s major mid-autumn harvest festival), she quietly booked herself onto a standard HanaTour trip under another name. No staff knew. No special treatment.
What she heard repeatedly from fellow travellers became her validation: “Please continue to explain why HanaTour exists – and why this product is different.”
Word of mouth followed. Performance turned. The bet paid off.
Turning guides into stars and risking short-term loss
Another quiet revolution happened on the front line.
HanaTour began openly promoting its top-performing tour leaders as “Star Guides”, naming products after them, spotlighting their satisfaction scores, and encouraging them to build personal followings.
In a market where guides were traditionally invisible, even disposable, this was a radical cultural shift.
Song acknowledged the trade-off.
“In the short term, HanaTour may experience losses,” she said. “But if this grows the market in the long term, we will do it.”
The logic was simple: talent is the real bottleneck. By giving guides pride, visibility and a future, HanaTour wasn’t just protecting its supply — it was redefining professional aspiration in the industry.
From hierarchy to autonomy – by design, not chaos
Song’s leadership style also challenged HanaTour’s internal DNA.
Rather than layered approvals and top-down control, she pushed decision-making closer to insight – insisting teams justify changes clearly, act quickly, and adapt when something didn’t work.
“If it doesn’t work while going, you should change it,” she said. “That is better than not going at all.”
This cultural shift mattered most as HanaTour began introducing AI.
AI as execution, not spectacle
HanaTour didn’t wake up to AI in 2025. It began years earlier – chatbots in 2020, structured data migration, gradual automation across operations.
By March 2025, it launched Hi AI, its front-end AI brand, designed not to replace people but to reshape how customers and staff interact with complexity
Song was clear: introducing AI in a legacy organisation is not a startup experiment.
“This is a company with heavy systems and a large workforce,” she said. “Change must be earned internally.”
What made it work wasn’t technology — it was clarity of purpose. Teams understood why change was happening, what they owned, and how success would be measured.
What comes next: 2026 and beyond
Looking ahead, Song outlined three priorities:
- Deeper segmentation — moving beyond age demographics to experience-based clustering, from active seniors to comfort-seeking backpackers.
- Operational complexity handled by tech — allowing HanaTour to scale customisation without human overload.
- Regional ambition — expanding outbound reach into Southeast Asia while strengthening inbound travel to Korea and Japan.
For Song, the hardest part of transformation isn’t announcing change.
It’s staying the course, long enough – in this case, six years – for belief to turn into proof.
