According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), in 2022, Vietnam only received 128,764 Japanese travelers, or just 1/10 of the pre-pandemic period (it was 1 million Japanese travelers in 2019). The figure was modest in the last three months, just 117,000.

VNAT said the growth rate was high, 28.5 percent, but the number was still small compared with Q1 2019 (463,000). As such, the recovery rate of Japanese travelers is still very slow, just 24 percent, compared with the pre-pandemic period.

China, Japan and South Korea have been Vietnam’s key northeast Asia markets for Vietnam, leading in the number of travelers to Vietnam.

In 2015-2019, the number of Japanese travelers to Vietnam increased by 1.4 times, from 671,000 in 2015 to 952,000 in 2019, or 9.1 percent per annum.

Explaining the modest number of Japanese travelers, Nguyen Van Tan, CEO of JTB-TNT, one of three largest travel firms receiving Japanese travelers in Vietnam, said Japanese are very cautious about Covid-19 and Japan was slower than other countries in removing travel restrictions.

The difficulties that Japan's economy is facing has affected people’s lives. The depreciation of the Japanese yen has led to an increase in travel costs. Not only Vietnam, but Thailand and Singapore, the other two destinations competing to attract Japanese travelers, also have received few Japanese travelers, according to Tan.

Meanwhile, the service system for Vietnam’s tourism has not fully recovered after the pandemic (hotels, restaurants, tour guides etc).

But Vietnamese travelers are flocking to Japan. After three years of staying at home, Vietnamese are traveling to Japan to make up for lost time, even though the country has recently tightened the granting of visas.

JNTO (Japan National Tourism Organization) reported that 55,800 Vietnamese came to Japan in February 2023. This was the second consecutive month that saw the number of travelers exceeding 50,000. This was the highest monthly figure, higher than 55,295 in April 2019.

In general, the number of Vietnamese travelers to Japan in the first two months of the year increased by 43.5 percent over the same period in 2019 (107,300 vs 74,752). To date, 95 percent of flights between Vietnam and Japan have been recovered. 

According to Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa from Dream Travel, her travel firm serves about 500 Vietnamese travelers who book tours to Japan in cherry blooming season, from February 14 to the end of April. To date, the company has closed May tours and begun selling summer tours.

Ngoc Ha