More than 93% of foreign travelers expressed their satisfaction towards trips to Vietnam in 2017, according to statistics by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).
According to VietnamNet, to conduct the survey, VNAT handed out some 27,000 questionnaires at 12 international border gates around the country including airports, land border gates and harbors. At these checkpoints, around 60% of surveyees were first-timers in Vietnam while 40% were visiting for at least a second time.
The results show that some 93.46% of travelers think that their visit was either "satisfactory" or "very satisfactory" while less than 1% of tourists had an "unsatisfactory" experience. The news source, however, doesn't go into details about the methodology behind the research and what kind of questions were included in the questionnaires.
Many industry insiders are skeptical about the overwhelmingly positive results that the VNAT report attained. Nguyen Van My from Lua Viet Travel, a tour agency, told VietnamNet that the survey results are "questionable."
“I believe that even Singapore and Thailand cannot get such perfect statistics,” he said. "Some days ago we heard that a foreign traveler was knocked down bleeding. Later, local newspapers reported travelers’ wallets were robbed. The complaints about littering appear so regularly on mass media. How can foreign travelers feel satisfied with such problems?”
Another unnamed analyst drew attention to the 40% in return rates as shown in the survey, commenting that the figure may "raise curiosity."
“I am doubtful about the accuracy of the given figures. As far as I know, only 10 percent of travelers come back to Vietnam, while the others come just for business purposes," he elaborated.
According to a VnExpess article in 2017, the tourist return rates of Singapore and Thailand hover around the 60% and 70% marks, respectively.
As VOV reports, Vietnam obtained VND312 trillion (US$13.5 billion) from tourism activities between January and June, an increase of 22.5% compared to the same period last year.
