Vietnam, the sun warm Southeastern Asian nation, is estimated to have received more than 1.29 million foreign tourist arrivals in the first quarter of 2008, up 15.7 per cent on-year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) reported.
The GSO has, however, not made the tourism revenue available during the reviewed period.
Chinese tourists were more than 216,800, taking the lead an on-year increase of 60.2 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 (141,400) and the U.S. (133,000), up 7.9 per cent and down 0.8 per cent respectively against 2007.
The top visitor markets of Vietnam with the strongest year-on-year growth during the quarter are Sweden (68.3 per cent), China (60.2 per cent) and Finland (48.3 per cent).
Vietnam, however, saw six markets registering the on-year fall in the first three months of the year namely Canada, Belgium, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Spain. Of the six, Spain dropped most with an on-year decrease of 27.4 per cent, followed by Cambodia, 12.7 per cent and Belgium, 8.5 per cent.
Vietnam once again witnessed growth in three groups of international arrivals in January-March 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 (58.2 per cent). The followings are those arriving to the country for holiday (12.4) and for visiting relatives (11.4 per cent).
The number of vacationers to the country for other purposes still falls, posting an on-year down of 19.1 per cent.
Vietnam hopes to attract 5 million foreign tourists and serve 21 million domestic holiday makers to yield VND64 trillion (US$4 billion) in 2008.
The tourism sector now contributes 8 per cent to Vietnam’s GDP. (GSO March 2008)
Vietnamese
