The local tourism industry witnessed a 27.2% upsurge of international arrivals during the first half of 2018, though it was noted that the inbound tourism segment remains heavily reliant upon the two source markets of China and South Korea.

Chinese visitors are seen arriving in Khanh Hoa Province 

Statistics from the General Statistics Office (GSO) shows Chinese and South Korean visitors made up a very large proportion of inbound tourists, at 54% of the total, up 7 percentage points year-on-year despite efforts by the tourism sector to diversify markets and reduce reliance on these two countries.

According to GSO, there were 7.89 million tourists arriving in Vietnam during the first six-months of the year, rising 27.2% against the same period last year. Arrivals from China alone accounted for 2.56 million people, up 36.1%, along with over 1.7 million South Koreans, increasing 60.7%.

The tourism sector has carried out policies to woo more Western tourists, but the number of incoming tourists remains small. In the January to June period this year, there were approximately one million European visitors coming to the country, a year-on-year increase of 11%. Among them, 338,400 were Russians, up 7.9%, 153,300 French, up 12.6% and 111,600 Germans, up 8.1%.

Many local tour operators said that arrivals from the two key markets of China and South Korea will continue rocketing and outstripping other markets in the near future. Particularly, South Korea will post extremely high growth rates because of newly-launched air routes linking the center of Vietnam, while Chinese travel agencies are urging their customers to travel to popular tourism localities such as Danang, Khanh Hoa, Phu Quoc and HCMC.

Also, according to an entrepreneur who recently attended the tourism event ITB China held in Shanghai, Chinese tour operators were mapping out plans to bring their customers to Vietnam on chartered flights.

SGT