A slowdown in the growth of foreign tourism in the first seven months of the year is putting the goal of 18 million international arrivals iat risk.
According Dan Tri, at a conference held in Da Nang on August 16, Nguyen Ngoc Thien, the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, addressed issues concerning drawing foreign tourists to Vietnam in 2019.
In the first seven months, 9.8 million foreign tourists visited Vietnam, an increase of only 7.9% compared to the same period last year. This growth rate signals a decline, as at the same point in 2018, the number of visitors from abroad had increased by 25.4% compared to the same time period in 2017.
One of the major reasons is that the number of Chinese tourists traveling abroad has generally declined in the face of China’s economic slowdown. According to a report from the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the number of visitors from China to Vietnam dropped by 2.8% compared to the same period last year.
Thien told the news source that in order to achieve the tourism goal of 2019, from now to the end of 2019, Vietnam has to attract an average of 1.5 million foreign visitors each month.
Tuoi Tre, meanwhile, reported that VNAT aims to promote Vietnam in Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian countries. In the first six months, there were two tourism fairs organized in China, and one in South Korea. Vietnam will continue to host economic, sport and cultural exchange events in these two areas during the next five months.
Additionally, many proposals were presented at the conference aimed at the sustainable development of Vietnam’s tourism sector, including encouraging cooperation between tourism companies and those in other sectors to build more tour packages and tourism promotion programs and the opening of new air routes to important tourist attractions.
[Photo via Flickr user PhotoZach]
