Vietnam Welcomes 4.83 Million Foreign Tourists in 10 Months

The number of foreign tourists to Vietnam in the first ten months of 2011 reached an estimated 4.83 million, an increase of 15.8 percent on last year, reported the Vietnam National Tourism Administration.

 

In October, the country attracted more than 518,000 foreign tourist arrivals, up more than 80 percent from October last year.

 

Over the past ten months, more than 4 million foreign tourists came to Vietnam by plane, a year-on-year rise of 20.8 percent. On the contrary, the number of foreign tourists to Vietnam by sea and road saw decreases of 27.1 percent and 0.4 percent compared to the same period last year.

 

Of a total of 4.83 million foreign tourists to Vietnam from the start of the year, more than 2.9 million visited the country for tourism purposes, a year-on-year rise of 11.9 percent. The rest came to the country for business, visiting relatives and other purposes.

 

So far this year, almost all foreign markets of Vietnam tourism have seen year-on-year increases. Visitors from Cambodia rose 56.9 percent while the number of tourists from China (45.8 percent), the Republic of Korea (6 percent), Japan (8.5 percent), Taiwan (5.9 percent), Malaysia (11.7 percent) and the US (0.09 percent) also saw positive increases.