Philippine Tourism Attaché Maricon Ebron presented to Ambassador Luis T. Cruz the three major awards DOT-Seoul received at the 21st Korean World Travel Fair (KOTFA) held on 5-12 June 2008, at the Seoul Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX).

The Best Booth Design Award went to the Philippine Pavilion, plus the Best Tourism Publicity and the Best Folklore Performance Awards at the Travel Fair. This is the second set of awards won by DOT-Seoul this year, after winning the Best Design Award, the Best Folklore Performance Award and the Best Booth Operation Award at the 6th Korean Tour Expo held in Daegu in April. The Philippine booth, which stood out among the 3,000 exhibitors, featured diverse Philippine tour products. Highlights include major tourist destinations from Boracay, Cebu and Bohol. Five Filipino child performers “The Playshop Kids” further attracted visitors with their daily song and dance performances at the main stage. The Korea World Travel Fair is an annual event organized by the Korea Tourism Organization is the largest international travel fair in Korea. This year’s edition of KOTFA was attended by over 100,000 travel industry professionals, buyers and travel consumers from 60 countries. The Korean travel market has become the Philippines' biggest contributor of visitor arrivals, supplying a total of 175,147 tourists for the first quarter of 2008. This figure represents 20.4 percent share of over-all foreign tourist traffic.