As many as 10 airlines operating on 30 routes ferry Chinese tourists from 20 localities in China to Vietnam, with up to 500, mainly chartered, flights per week.

Domestic and foreign travel enterprises gather at the International Travel Expo 2018 in HCMC

Ha Van Sieu, deputy head of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), noted that the local aviation market has seen mostly chartered flights ferrying 70% of the Chinese tourists to Khanh Hoa Province, Quang Ninh Province, Danang City, Hanoi City, HCMC and Phu Quoc Island, among other places in Vietnam.

Khanh Hoa Province reportedly records the largest number of visitors, with 173 flights per week. Chinese tourists account for 60% of the total international visitors to the province's Nha Trang City, while 

Chinese visitors to Danang City and Quang Ninh Province are recorded at 30% and 20%, respectively.

“Some destinations tend to face an overload of services due to the large concentration of visitors at tourist spots,” Sieu stressed at a seminar held on the sidelines of the International Travel Expo 2018 in HCMC’s District 7.

A few representatives suggested the tourism agencies work with their Chinese counterparts to ferry visitors to various destinations in Vietnam instead of a single location to ease the load and enhance service quality. They agreed that it is essential to urgently introduce more of Vietnam’s tourist sites to visitors.

“It is necessary to reduce the density of visitors in populous tourist destinations, such as Nha Trang City,” Nguyen Van Tuan, head of VNAT, stated, adding that other places, such as Phu Quoc Island, have features and favorable conditions to develop the tourism sector and handle large numbers of tourists.

Tuan told The Saigon Times on the sidelines of the seminar that arrivals from the Chinese market will continue to grow strongly in the next few months, adding that the number of Chinese tourists to Vietnam will probably exceed five million in 2018.

Last year, Vietnam welcomed four million Chinese nationals among the 13 million international tourists in the country, according to the General Statistics Office.

A source from VNAT pointed out that Chinese tourists tend to travel in groups, spending an average of US$790 per trip, of which 32% is spent on accommodation.

Some firms attending the seminar pointed out that the tourism sector needs to have a more skilled workforce and should create multiple products to meet customers’ growing travel demands.

The seminar also saw many domestic enterprises signing cooperation agreements with Chinese firms to develop the tourism market. Saigontourist Travel Service Company, for example, signed a memorandum of understanding with OCT International Service Corporation on the exchange of customers.

SGT