Vietnam Tourism: More Foreign Tourists

12:00:00 AM | 7/21/2005

In recent years, Vietnam tourism has recorded a high growth. Vietnam currently has 283 international travel companies, half of them are limited liability, joint stock companies and joint ventures. The tourist sector has 470 hotels and 5,193 tourist guides. In addition to the State investment of VND1,596 billion, Vietnamese tourism has also benefited from other important sources of investment, especially from direct foreign investment (FDI). From 1988 to 2003, there were 215 FDI projects with total registered capital of US$5,906 million. In the first half of 2004, two projects were licensed with a capital of US$107 million. The governments of Luxembourg, Japan, Germany, France, Singapore, Spain and several international organisations have financed or committed ODA to develop tourism in Vietnam.

At the press conference reviewing the activities in the first half of 2004 and celebrating the 44th anniversary of Vietnamese tourism (July 9, 1960-2004), Dr. Pham Tu, the Deputy Director General of Vietnam Administration of Tourism, said that since 1999 the number of foreign tourists has increased ten fold and local tourists 13 fold, seeing the social turnover increasing by respective amounts.

In the first half of 2004, the turnover from tourism was VND13,200 billion, 30.5 per cent more than the same period last year. There were 1,392,461 foreign tourists and 6.6 million domestic tourists. Among the foreign tourists, 31 per cent were from China, 28 per cent from North East Asia and 14 per cent from Europe. The number of tourists from other ASEAN countries remains modest.

Vietnam plans to develop tourism as a spearhead economic sector, and by 2020 it aims to become a top ranking nation in terms of tourism. In 2004-2005, the tourist sector will expand markets in Europe, North East Asia and China, and will organise promotional activities, such as exhibition fairs in foreign countries, to attain its objectives of 2005. The targets for 2005 are 3-3.5 million foreign tourists, 16-17 million local tourists and a turnover of US$2.1-2.5 billion.