Foreign Tourists Flock to Vietnam during Tet Holiday

3:26:30 PM | 7/8/2005

Foreign Tourists Flock to Vietnam during Tet Holiday

A series of festive activities and attractive domestic tours lured a great amount of foreigners to Vietnam during the traditional Lunar New Year (Tet), falling on February 8-11, national travel companies reported.

According to unofficial statistics, the figure for the festival this year, the Year of Rooster is expected to post a huge surge over the same period last year although it does not count returning overseas Vietnamese, who are expected to total 100,000.

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) revealed that the hospitality sectors in almost all cities and provinces nationwide have earned the most-ever lucrative period.

In the first five days of Tet, Ho Chi Minh City alone welcomed around 17,000 international visitors, largely up over the same period last year.

On February 11 (the third day of the new lunar year), Seaburn Sdirit vessel from the Bahamas and the Peace Boat with 200 and 940 passengers on board docked at central tourism hub of Danang City, marking the first tourism delegations to the country by ships.

In the capital city of Hanoi, almost all hotels reported a high rate of occupancy, representing an increase of 20 per cent on-year. The five-star Sofitel Metropole Hanoi hotel revealed that 95 per cent of its rooms have been booked from the end of January to May.

Particularly, the strong attraction of the “Central Heritage Road” made transport system to the region, home to four out of five World Heritage Sites in Vietnam, overloaded.

Although the national flag carriers Vietnam Airlines and the Pacific Airlines increased the number of flights and even put extra planes on the Ho Chi Minh City-Danang route, some tour operators said they lost passengers because of shortage of airline tickets to the region.

Contrary to the rise of in-bound tourists, the number of out-bound visitors this year has posted a great reduction of 50-60 per cent on-year. In spite of special discount programs, tours to regional nations including Thailand and Malaysia lured very few clients.

The move allegedly resulted from the severe consequences of the Asian Tsunami, which hit the region in late December.

In 2005, Vietnam plans to receive 3.2 million foreign visitors and to serve 15 million domestic tourists in 2005, a year-on-year increase of 14 per cent and 10.5 per cent, respectively. It also aims to earn a revenue of VND30 trillion (US$1.91 billion), a 15 per cent increase over 2004.