Vietnam welcomes 12.9 million foreign tourists in 9 months

Vietnam welcomed 12.9 million foreign visitors in the first nine months of 2019, a year-on-year rise of 10.8 percent, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Foreign visitors at Phu Quoc night market

In September alone, the number of foreign holidaymakers to Vietnam was estimated at 1.56 million.

The office said the number of foreign arrivals from Asian nations saw the highest increase of 12.5 percent, followed by those from Africa, America and Europe with respective rises of 10.8 percent, 6.8 percent and 5.3 percent.

Vietnam’s tourism sector aims to receive 17.5 – 18 million foreign tourists in 2019 and serve 85 million domestic visitors, raking in total revenue of 700 trillion VND (30.17 billion USD).

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy under the Ministry of Industry and Trade have signed a cooperation agreement on applying advanced technologies and e-commerce to support the tourism sector’s development.

At present, online platforms for travel booking such as Airbnb, Agoda, Booking are strongly developed.

The cooperation between the two agencies is expected to improve the competitiveness of domestic e-commerce trading floors, helping to better ensure interests of visitors when they use tourism services provided on online platforms.

VNA