Around 6.5 million Vietnamese traveled abroad last year, a rise of 15% over the previous year, and spent around US$7-8 billion, statistics of the Vietnam Tourism Association (VITA) showed.

Vu The Binh, vice chairman of VITA, said the association only gleaned data from tourism authorities of some countries popular to Vietnamese tourists such as Thailand, Singapore, China, the Republic of Korea and Japan, so VITA statistics are not adequate.

The number of Vietnamese tourists has been on the rise, leading to a large pickup in spending, Binh said.

The outbound travel segment  has become a main source of income for many enterprises. 

For example, pre-tax revenues of top 10 HCM City-based operators of outbound tours reached VND5.5 trillion in 2015.

More than 240,000 Vietnamese visited the Republic of Korea in 2016, a 58% year-on-year increase. 

The number of local tourists to Japan rose to a five-year high, with a staggering 202,600 Vietnamese coming to Japan for leisure travel in January-October last year alone.

VOV