Around 459,500 Vietnamese traveled abroad in the first ten months of this year, up 40 per cent over the same period last year with more than 80 per cent joining organized tours, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).
It is truly a rapid leap, the country’s tourism authority said.
Though it is now not the peak time for overseas tours, which is in summer, almost all the nation’s leading tour operators are still receiving high number of orders, VNAT said.
The number one travel firm Saigontourist has organized outbound tours to 2,100 domestic holidaymakers since early October alone, up 29 per cent on-year. Fiditourist has also sent one or two delegations abroad per week with up to 800 guests in October, up 12 per cent on-year.
Meanwhile, Ben Thanh firm said, demand for outbound tours even exceeds that for domestic tours with at least one outbound tour held per week, raising the total number of tourists abroad via the company to 5,833, up 12 per cent on-year.
“Hottest” destinations for local travelers are China, followed by Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore.
At Ben Thanh company, tourists to China account for 60 per cent of its total outbound guests while those at Saigontourists and Fiditourist are 39 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively.
Registrations for Cambodia are also rising sharply, allegedly due to the low tour prices at around VND3 million (US$190)/guest, local travel firms said.
Fiditourist organizes tours for 30-40 guests weekly while the Lua Viet Travel firm sent nearly 2,000 tourists to Cambodia in the first ten months, doubling that in the same period last year.
Orders for markets like US, Japan, S. Korea, Hong Kong and Australia, which were relative “strange” to Vietnamese travelers, are now also rising, listing them into the top ten most favored destinations of local people.
Tourism experts attributed the move to higher incomes or in other words, the larger number of high income earners in Vietnam and the consecutive discount campaigns for such outbound tours such as Thailand, Singapore and China, which leads to the average price of outbound tours even equal to some domestic ones.
In addition, Vietnamese people like traveling abroad very much, an official from VNAT noted.
Liberated Saigon
Vietnamese
