The seminar had the participations of Deputy Director General of VNAT Nguyen Quoc Hung and representatives of departments and functional units under VNAT; expert of EU project; representatives of international organizations in Viet Nam; tourism enterprises and press agencies.

At the seminar, Mr. Vu Nam - Deputy Director of Tourism Marketing Department (VNAT) said that the annual report on source markets of Viet Nam is the first step for VNAT to release the annual overview report on international tourist markets. This is also the reference document for all units, organizations and individuals involved in tourism. The report will update information, data and numbers from researches and reports on current development situation; at the same time update forecast of tourism development trend from prestigious international organizations. 

Also at the seminar, Mr. Kai Partale – Expert of EU project presented the analyzing report on the situation of international tourists to Viet Nam from some source markets. In Viet Nam Tourism Development Strategy to 2020, vision 2030 approved by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Viet Nam will prioritize marketing in the markets of Northeast Asia (Japan, the Republic of Korea, China, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia), Russia, Australia and New Zealand; at the same time maintain marketing activities in the markets of West Europe (U.K, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands), North Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden) and North America (U.S and Canada). According to General Statistics Office, the total number of international tourists to Viet Nam in the first 7 months of 2015 estimated 4,398,202 arrivals. Compared with the same period of 2014, 10 markets which have the increasing number of tourists to Viet Nam includes the Republic of Korea (35.5%), Finland (15.8%), Singapore (13.4%), Spain (6.4%), Italy (5.7%), U.S (5.6%), Taiwan (3.8%), Germany (1.4%), Japan (1.2%) and Netherlands (0.8%). The markets have trend to decrease tourists to Viet Nam as Cambodia (-43.9%), Laos (-36.1%), Thailand (-31.2%), China (-24.4% )... In that context, in order to solve difficulties of tourism industry, Government of Viet Nam has issued many important policies to facilitate immigration procedures and tourism environment improvement, contributing to promoting Viet Nam tourism development in the new situation, notably the policy on visa exemption for citizens of U.K, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belarus (from 1 July 2015), whereby increasing the number of countries whose citizens are exempt visa to Viet Nam up to 22 countries (along with 9 ASEAN countries and 7 other countries including Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Japan and the Republic of Korea).

Thu Giang

Photo: Diem Phi