A corner of Hoi An ancient city in Quang Nam province. (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam has remained in the world’s top fastest-growing destinations, expanding 50 – 70% monthly, since the beginning of 2022, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).
Vietnam welcomed 954,000 international tourists in the first seven months of 2022, a nine-fold increase from the same period last year. The growth in the number of foreign visitors averaged 62% per month during the January-July period, VNAT said.
Most of the foreign visitors came from Asia-Pacific, including the Southeast Asian nations of Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The Republic of Korea was Vietnam’s largest source of tourists during the period, followed by the US.
Though small, the number of travellers from Europe has been on the rise, with a relatively high growth, particularly those from the UK, France and Germany.
VNAT said the outlook for the recovery of tourism firms is more visible as the number of enterprises resuming their operations is increasing, providing more jobs. In the first half of the year, VNAT granted licences to 312 new international tour operators, up 286 from 2021.
By the end of June, Vietnam had had 2,415 international travel companies and those operating domestically had reached 1,060.
Phu Quoc Island is among the most popular destinations in Vietnam. (Photo: VNA)
Search volumes for accommodations in Vietnam last month hit 100 points, 5.9 times higher than the start of March (17 points). Most of the traffic was from the US, Australia, Singapore, India, Japan, the RoK, the UK, Malaysia, Germany and Thailand.
Meanwhile, the search volumes for foreign destinations by Vietnamese travellers in July soared 780% year-on-year as international travel has rebounded. The most searched destinations included six nations in Southeast Asia, namely Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
VNAT further noted that Vietnam will attend the JATA Tourism Expo in Japan from September 22 – 25 and the World Travel Market (WTM) in the UK from November 7 – 9 in an effort to attract more foreign arrivals.
The country will also host the International Travel Expo, one of the two largest international travel expos in Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City from September 8 – 10.
A tourism promotion event will take place in Hoi An ancient city in the south central province of Quang Nam from October 9 – 14 as part of the Mekong Tourism Forum 2022./.