Choi Song-hyun: From announcer and actress to travel CEO

Choi Song-hyun, an actress and former KBS announcer, has embarked on a new challenge by establishing her own travel agency and completing her registration as a tourism business operator. After building her career as a broadcaster and actress, she expanded her professional scope as a scuba diving expert, and now she has turned her long-held dream of running a travel business into reality.

On the 14th, Choi announced via her SNS, “I have registered as a domestic and international travel agency and become a tourism business operator.” In a video shared alongside the announcement, she showed herself smiling brightly while saying, “I’ve become a travel agency CEO,” expressing her excitement for this new beginning.

The core of the business Choi has envisioned is not merely selling simple tour packages, but rather travel and tour programs based on the experiences of herself and her husband. She explained, “Since the early days of YouTube, there have been many grateful people who told me they wanted to go on tours with us as a couple.”

While the concept began early on, it took a significant amount of time to execute. Choi revealed that the plan was delayed due to various variables, stating, “Between COVID-19 and a car accident... there were several situations that held us back whenever we dreamed of this.” Nevertheless, she eventually laid the foundation to operate the agency herself and has reached the stage of being able to recruit tours for her subscribers and fans.

In particular, Choi did not hide the practical difficulties she faced during the business registration process. “I had a mental breakdown at times while trying to find an office and prepare many documents required for tourism business registration,” she said, adding, “But I feel incredibly proud because I finally did it on my own strength.”

This move is drawing attention because Choi's career path differs somewhat from the typical trajectory of a broadcaster-turned-entrepreneur. She entered the broadcasting industry in 2006 as a 32nd recruitment open announcer for KBS. She later resigned from KBS in 2008 and expanded her field of activity by transitioning into acting. Following her broadcasting skills, she added acting experience and has constantly varied her career direction by developing her long-standing interests into professional domains.

Among these, scuba diving is a key keyword that describes Choi's current activities. After starting scuba diving in 2012, she did not stop at it being a simple hobby but built professional expertise. In 2015, she obtained a professional scuba diving instructor certification, and since then, she has consistently presented related content, such as overseas diving spots and underwater tours, through her personal YouTube channel.

In this process, travel for Choi was closer to an activity of direct experience and accumulating professional information rather than a consumptive act of simply visiting famous tourist attractions. Especially since she has experienced various overseas regions centered around the specialized leisure of scuba diving, this travel business is highly likely to take the form of connecting her content and experiences into a business.

Her husband, EJAE, is also known to be a scuba diving instructor. Based on their shared interests, the two have worked as both a married couple and diving partners, and Choi has shared their daily lives involving travel and diving through SNS and YouTube. The travel experiences the couple has shared since their marriage in 2020 are also expected to serve as important assets for this tour business.

Notably, there is an increasing trend of creators not merely letting their content be consumed as videos, but expanding it into actual products, services, and community activities. Choi's establishment of a travel agency aligns with this trend in that she is converting the content and expertise she has accumulated into actual travel programs.

Having started her broadcasting career as an announcer, moved into acting, and secured new expertise through scuba diving, Choi has now jumped onto another stage: the travel industry. Her sentiment of “I did it on my own strength” contains a sense of achievement that goes beyond simply starting a business, reflecting how she has accumulated the things she loves over a long period to finally create a single industrial domain.

Attention is also focused on what kind of regions and content the tours planned by Choi will consist of in the future. As her diverse career in broadcasting, acting, diving, and travel combines within a single business, it remains to be seen whether she can utilize her past experiences in a new way.