HANOI: Vietnam hopes to boost its tourism market with more promotions and campaigns in potential markets such as India, the United States and the European Union.
Its tourism authorities hope that such campaigns will push its tourist arrivals to five million this year.
Vietnam National Administration of Tourism deputy head Nguyen Trung Khanh recently said that the tourism sector had shown signs of marked improvement after the government eased entry rules to the country on March 15.
He said the current quarantine-free entry into Vietnam has spurred foreign tourist arrivals, after the country remained closed to international travel for about two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to a Vn Express report, Vietnam received 602,000 foreign tourists in the first half of this year. This is 6.8 times the number of arrivals compared to the same period last year when pandemic-related entry restrictions were still in force.
However, this is just 12 per cent of the five million target set for this year.
Khanh said that for the second half of the year, the tourism industry needed to focus on attracting tourists from potential markets like India, the US, Europe and also the Middle East.
Vietnam National Administration of Tourism statistics show that the second highest number of tourists are from the US.
Before the pandemic, India was one of Vietnam's fastest-growing tourism markets with a yearly increase of 28 per cent in 2019. On the other hand, the number of Vietnamese tourists to India grew at an average of 17 per cent a year between 2016 and 2019.
Taking these into account, Vietnam Airlines currently operates direct flights connecting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to San Francisco while budget airline Vietjet Air plans to open more routes to Indian cities.
Vietjet Air had also announced the launch of new services to three Indian cities from Hanoi, HCMC and Da Nang.
It will start flying to Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bengaluru from Hanoi on Sept 27, Oct 7 and Nov 2 respectively.
From HCMC, it will start on Sept 29, Oct 8 and Nov 1, while services from Da Nang will begin in late November.
Vietjet deputy CEO Nguyen Thanh Son said the new routes would take to 17 the number of direct services to India, which is one of Vietnam's most promising tourism markets.
According to data from Google's Destination Insights, after Vietnam reopened to international tourism, the search for direct flights from India grew by 400 per cent year-on-year in early April and by over 3,000 per cent in late May.
The frequency of searches for accommodation also tripled in mid-June compared to early April.
In addition to the Indian market, tourism officials said they will work with travel firms and foreign ambassadors to boost travel campaigns in Western European countries, South Korea, Japan and Asean countries, particularly those that Vietnam has offered visa exemptions.
The tourism industry will also organise familiarisation trips for travel firms from these countries.
Since the country's reopening, Vietnam has resumed its pre-pandemic visa exemption policy for citizens from 24 countries, including Japan, South Korea and EU members. For tourists from other countries, they are issued a single-entry visa that is valid for a month.Travel firms have complained that Vietnam's visa policies were still the biggest barrier in Vietnam's tourism recovery, especially since Thailand was attracting about 300,000 tourists a month and was similarly looking to boost its numbers.
Several industry insiders have proposed that apart from the tourism promotion campaigns, the government needed to relax current visa policies to give the tourism industry a boost.
There have been calls for the length of visa-free stay for tourists from Japan, South Korea and Western European economies to be extended from the current 15 days to 30 and for visa exemption to be granted to tourists from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, North America and India.