Representatives from the top 43 travel firms in Japan, all members of the Japanese Travel Agent Association (JATA), will tour Vietnam September 8-12 to survey the nation’s tourism potential.
Japanese tourism companies will survey destinations that are attractive to Japanese visitors, such as Hanoi, Quang Ninh, Hue, Danang, Quang Nam and Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnamese Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Hoang Tuan Anh, will meet with Japanese travel agents to encourage them to send more Japanese visitors.
“We want Japanese travel agents to see that Vietnam is still a safe destination,” Nguyen Van Tran, director of APEX Company, the organizer of this trip, said, adding that Japanese visitors are very sensitive to information about diseases.
Last year, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) and JATA signed an agreement to boost tourism cooperation, aiming to raise the number of Japanese visitors from over 400,000 in 2007 to 600,000 by 2010.
However, the number of Japanese visitors coming to Vietnam has decreased since 2007, with only around 393,000 in 2008 and some 198,000 in the first seven months of 2009.
JATA agreed to list Vietnam as one of the ten destinations in its Visit World Campaign, which targets increasing the number of Japanese tourists going abroad to 20 million in 2010. Other destinations on this list are Guam, Hawaii, South Korea, Hong Kong and France. (VietNamNet)
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