Tourism industry targets 8 mln foreign arrivals

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has unveiled a plan to promote the tourism industry overseas with a target to welcome 8 million foreign visitors this year.

Under the plan, the authority and travel businesses will participate in international tourism exhibitions and promotion programmes in Japan, la República de Corea (RoK), Porcelana, Rusia, Europe and Southeast Asia.

It will focus on popular tourism fairs that attract a large number of participants such as the international tourism expo in Russia’s Moscow, the Top Resa fair in France, the CITM fair in China and the ITB Berlin fair in Germany.

It will also organise trips to Vietnam for foreign reporters to promote the country’s tourism potential and tighten the relationship between local and foreign travel firms.

This year, VNAT will try to expand its markets through attending tourism expos in the Middle East and India.

Además, the tourism industry will promote golf tourism, which targets the RoK, a potential market for this tourism segment.

Although the golf tourism is still new and has yet to be developed in Vietnam, there are more and more tourists from the RoK who are coming to Ho Chi Minh City to play golf, especially at weekends.

Under the plan, VNAT will also organise food festivals to further boost tourism activities.

The country’s tourism will continue to be advertised on social networks, smart phones and the internet, according to VNAT.

Vietnam received more than 7.5 million foreign tourists in 2013, a rise of 10.6% over the previous year.

Last year, the industry spent some VND20 billion (US$1 million) on the promotion programmes.