Vietnam, the sun warm Southeastern Asian nation, welcomed about 370,000 international tourists in the first month of 2009, a year-on-year decrease of 11.9 per cent, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
Of the foreign visitors, 231,500 were tourists, 65,000 visits were work-related, and 55,000 came for family reunions, the agency reported.
Among markets, the number of Chinese visitors dropped by 12.1 per cent to 60,700, of the Japanese by 1.5 per cent to 34,700, and of those from the United States by 18.1 per cent to 33,400.
However, the number of visitors from France, Singapore and Malaysia registered increases of 51.1 per cent, 26.6 per cent and 23.2 per cent on year, respectively.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism has blamed the decrease in arrivals on the global economic crisis, which has prompted people to save on traveling expenses.
The agency expects the slowdown to continue at least until September 2009.
The tourism industry has launched a promotional campaign entitled “Impressive Vietnam” under which prices of tour packages will be cut by between 30 per cent and 50 per cent to lure more foreign arrivals to the country.
The scheme will accord priority to exploiting the domestic and ASEAN markets as well as other key markets like Northeast Asia, Western Europe and Australia.
Since the beginning of the year, many cruise ships have brought tourists in Vietnam. Notably, the five-star cruise ship Delphin Voyager docked at Saigon port on February 4, bringing 500 German tourists and crewmen to Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnam has set target of welcoming five million foreign and 21.5 million local tourists this year despite negative impacts of the global economic slowdown. (GSO)
Vietnamese
