Foreign arrivals in Vietnam slid 11.3 percent in the first half of this year to reach over 3.8 million due to the looming MERS-CoV threat and downfall from the struggling Russian market.

According to General Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) Nguyen Van Tuan, the number of inbound tourists is estimated at 40 million, generating 190 trillion VND (8.75 billion USD) in revenue, up 1.7 percent annually.

Since the tourism stimulus programme “Vietnamese people travel across Vietnam” was launched by the VNAT five months ago, domestic visitors to localities were on the rise, which offset earnings generated by foreign travellers, said Vietravel Hanoi’s inbound department head Pham Van Bay.

During the period, 2.2 million visitors arrived in the central coastal city of Da Nang, 1.6 million of them are Vietnamese, representing respective rises of 24.9 percent and 22 percent.

Hanoi welcomes 10 million visitors

Travellers to Hanoi during the first six months of this year reached around 10 million, up 4% from the same period last year, according to the municipal Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

The announcement was made on July 6 during a conference to deploy Hanoi tourism tasks for the last six months of 2015 and an action plan to develop tourism under Government Resolution.

Statistics also showed that more than 1.58 million of the visitors were foreigners, up 8.8%, and 8.45 million were domestic travellers, up 3%.

Total revenue from tourism was estimated at around VND15 trillion (nearly US$700 million), an increase of 3% compared to the same period of 2014.

VNA