Ho Chi Minh City, the biggest city of Vietnam, expects to welcome 2.65 million international visitors in 2007, up around 10 per cent from last year, announced the municipal department of tourism.
The city also hopes for tourism revenue of VND19.5 trillion, up 20 per cent on-year.
The United States, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, China, France, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada remain the ten key markets of the city’s tourism sector this year.
To this end, the department has announced the events and tourism promotion activities of this year, aiming to lure interest from domestic and foreign travel agents, hotels and airlines from France, the US, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.
The city will be hosting a number of festivals including the Vietnam-Korea Festival and the Roadshow in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. It will also be taking part in the International Tourism Expo in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific Travel Expo in Guangzhou, China.
Ho Chi Minh City has set up an advertising plan through which the city will invest more in printing leaflets to provide information to foreign tourists and journalists in several of its focal markets such as America, Japan and Russia.
The southern metropolis greeted around 2.4 million foreign vacationers in 2006, 17.5 per cent higher than 2005.
Currently, the city has the highest number of luxurious hotels in Vietnam with 150 hotels including ten five-star and four four-star hotels with 10,000 rooms. The city also reports 304 travel companies, including 120 licensed to provide outbound tours. (Vietnam Panorama)
Vietnamese
