More Tourists Return to Vietnam

The second and third return to Vietnam by foreign tourists has recorded a dramatic increase since 2003. This is result of a survey on visitors’ expenses and structure in Vietnam in 2005, made public by Vietnam General Department of Statistics at the beginning of February.

 

The survey carried out on 30,500 and 34,000 tourists coming to Vietnam by the end of 2003 and in November, 2005, respectively, in 26 cities and provinces. The survey said that the first volume of foreign visitor was the largest, accounting for 65 per cent of the total. The second amounted to 21 per cent, 6.4 per cent rise and the third upwards made up 14 per cent, up 0.3 per cent.

 

According to the General Department of Statistics, the 2005 survey findings showed that number of foreign visitors coming to Vietnam for a second and third time increased remarkably. This proves that Vietnamese tourism is increasingly attracting foreign tourists.

The survey also said that tourists from ASEAN and our neighbouring countries and territories such as Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and China are the majority of the total coming to Vietnam for the third time upwards. This is easily understandable, due to the advantage in time and expense for a tour to Vietnam over ones on farther continents.

 

The average stay in Vietnam of a turn of foreign tourists is now longer, at 13.8 days, while it was 10.6 days in 2003. It is currently 9.7 days with organised tourist groups and 16.8 days with self-arranged ones. In 2005, 42.5 per cent of visitors chose tours organised by travel agencies and 57.5 per cent adopted self-arranged tours.

 

A notable statistic from the survey is that the majority of tourists coming to Vietnam are businessmen, accounting for 22 per cent in 2005. This rate was 20 per cent in 2003.

 

The rest are architects, engineers, doctors (15 per cent); teachers, lecturers (10 per cent - this rate of 2003 was 6.2 per cent), students (9.1 per cent) and government officials (4.8 per cent).

 

Tourists from Asia are the largest group at 45 per cent, next are tourists from Europe (33 per cent), America (14 per cent) and Oceania (8.2 per cent). In comparison with 2003, the growth of tourists from Asia and Europe is increasing faster than that of America and Oceania. The number of tourists form America has decreased in comparison to 2003.

 

The number of people who come for tourism, relaxation and entertainment purposes is the largest amount at 77 per cent. Other groups are those combining tourism with trading (6.9 per cent), visiting relatives (7.3 per cent), attending conferences, seminars and short courses (3.2 per cent), the remainder are journalists and those here for other purposes.

 

Regarding the structure of international tourists in terms of location, 10 per cent (17 per cent in 2003) of tourists stayed in five-star hotels and 15.5 per cent at four-star hotels. This proves a permutation between investigations of 2003 and 2005 that the rate of tourists staying at four-star hotels increased from 10 per cent in 2003 to 16 per cent in 2005; whereas the rate of tourists staying at five-star hotels decreased from 17 per cent in 2003 to 10 per cent in 2005. Other tourists stayed in three-star hotels (24 per cent), two-star hotels (16 per cent) and one-star hotels (13 per cent).

 

Both above investigations in 2003 and 2005 were carried out by random selection method with the number of domestic and international tourists staying in hotels within the last 20 days of November 2003 and July 2005. Investigated hotels are equally selected to ensure that they’re representative of all places with different levels of convenience in 26 tourism targeted provinces and cities in the country.