Vietnam, the sun warm Southeastern Asian nation, welcomes more than 860,000 foreign tourist arrivals in the first two months of 2008, up 5 per cent on-month and 15 per cent on-year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) stated.
The surge has been attributed to the flow of foreign vacationers to the country to enjoy spring festivals.
Among listed markets, China remains its position as largest tourism market of Vietnam during the two-month time with more than 145,195, putting an on-year increase of 52.2 per cent, the GSO said, attributing the rise to the two countries’ efforts to speed up bilateral tourism ties in recent times.
The runners-up are South Korea (94,690) and the U.S. (89,000), up 1.6 per cent and 8 per cent respectively against 2007.
Top visitor markets of Vietnam with the strongest year-on-year growth during the reviewed period are Sweden (60.8 per cent), China (52.2 per cent) and Finland (46.2 per cent).
Vietnam, however, sees eight markets registering the on-year fall in the first two months of the year namely Belgium, Cambodia, Netherlands, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, France and Spain. Among the eight, Spain dropped most with an on-year decrease of 33 per cent, followed by Russia, 11 per cent and Belgium, 9.2 per cent.
Vietnam once again witnesses growth in three groups of international arrivals in January-February period, including those flocking to the nation for doing businesses, visiting relatives, and for holidays.
Of them, the number of visitors coming to the communist country for business registers the highest rate (57.4 per cent). The followings are those arriving to the country for holiday (13.5 per cent) and for visiting relatives (4.9 per cent).
The number of vacationers to the country for other purposes still fell 21.1 per cent on year.
Vietnam hopes to attract 5 million foreign tourists and serve 21 million domestic holiday makers to yield VND64 trillion (US$4 billion) in 2008, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh said.
The tourism sector now contributes 8 per cent to Vietnam’s national GDP. (GSO Edition Feb)
Vietnamese
