Vietnam has been voted as one of the 20 best travel destinations in 2007 by readers of prestigious travel magazine Condé Nast Traveller, state media said.
This is the first time Vietnam has entered the list this year, ranking 18th among the top 20 selected travel destinations.
The annual Condé Nast Traveller Readers' Travel Awards honor the hotels, airlines, islands, tour operators, spas, cruise lines, cities, and countries that its readers see as most conducive to rewarding travel.
The annual country poll was conducted among 30,000 readers with evaluations based on ten different categories, including “abundance of culture”, “variety of attractions”, “range of accommodation”, and “environmental friendliness”.
India took the first position in this year’s list, compared with fourth place last year. The popular South Asian country scored above 89 in all ten criteria, with its best features being culture (scoring 97.17 out of 100), value for money (94.78) and variety of attractions (96.30).
The other top five winning countries were Italy, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand scored highly for scenery and Italy has the best food and climate in the world while Thailand was singled out for its friendliness.
Together with Vietnam, Argentina, Chile, Japan and Egypt were the list’s newcomers.
In the global luxury travel trade circles, the Condé Nast Traveller awards are considered the equivalent of the Oscars of the travel industry.
To date, Vietnam has five natural and cultural world heritage sites recognized by UNESCO, including the complex of Hue monuments, Hoi An ancient town, the My Son sanctuary, Ha Long bay, and the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. It also boasts other world intangible heritages, namely the Tay Nguyen gong culture in addition to Hue royal music.
Vietnam is also now home to around 8,556 hotels with 170,551 rooms. Of them, there are 25 five-star, 65 four-star, 141 three-star hotels and the remaining are 1-2 star hotels.
Presently, the tourism industry contributes 8 per cent to Vietnam’s national GDP. (Youth)
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