Vietnam, RoK cooperate to develop tourism

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) and the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) will cooperate to launch campaigns to attract visitors between the two countries, heard a programme in Hanoi on October 20.

The KTO signed a tourism development cooperation agreement with the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines to host the Republic of Korea’s tourism year in 2017 to build new tourism services in the RoK by using Vietnam Airlines’ routes.

Meanwhile, the Korean organization will work with the Vietnam Travel and Marketing Transport JSC (Vietravel) to host the RoK’s tourism year in 2017 to boost cooperation in popularising new tourism products and brands.

Head of the KTO Jung Chang Soo said he believes that with active collaboration from such important strategic partners as Vietnam Airlines and Vietravel, the number of Vietnamese tourists to the RoK – which now makes up only 1.4 percent of total international visitors to the RoK – will sharply increase.

In 2015, the RoK welcomed more than 160,000 Vietnamese visitors. The same year, Vietnam greeted over 1.1 million Korean tourists.

In the first nine months of 2016, the volume of Vietnamese vacationers to the RoK rose by 50 percent over the same period last year, which is expected to hit 240,000 by year’s end.

The number of Korean holidaymakers to Vietnam saw a year-on-year increase of 36 percent and is set to reach 1.5 million by year’s end.

VNA