Chinese tourists at a Nha Trang City restaurant. The number of Chinese visitors to Khanh Hoa Province accounted for two-thirds of the total international arrivals in the province in the first three months of 2019

Statistics from the Khanh Hoa Department of Tourism show that some 898,300 international tourists visited the province in January-March, up 20% year-on-year. Of the figure, more than 652,800 travelers came from China, rising a whopping 38%.

Based on statistics from the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, the province welcomed over 50% of the total Chinese arrivals in Vietnam in the first quarter, while the year-ago figure amounted to 35%.

The Chinese arrivals in Khanh Hoa Province accounted for 63% of the total foreign tourists in the first three months of 2018, but the rate rose to 72.6% in the same period this year, according to the statistics of the department.

The majority of Chinese visitors came to the province on chartered flights. Over the first few months of 2019, some 200 chartered flights carried passengers to the province a week.

Recently, the provincial tourism sector has stepped up various tourism programs to diversify its source markets and attract more tourists, resulting in some positive changes in the South Korean and Thai source markets.

Over 43,900 South Korean visitors and 2,750 Thai tourists visited Khanh Hoa Province in the first quarter of 2019, surging 217% and 230% year-on-year, respectively.

As the number of visitors from these source markets to the province was much lower than that of Chinese arrivals, the gap failed to be bridged.

Besides this, the number of tourists from Russia, the province’s main source market, is declining. In the first quarter this year, the province saw the number of Russian visitors falling by 5% year-on-year to 135,950. SGT