The fair is designed to create opportunities for localities, organisations, and enterprises to popularise their tourism products and develop business connections. It will also enhance Vietnam’s tourism image, contributing towards developing tourism into a spearhead economy for the nation.

Under the project, from 2020, the VITM will be held annually in April in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, and its themes will be in line with market trends and demand of tourism development.

The event will feature at least 300 pavilions, with 25 percent of them international firms.

The number of international tourist arrivals to Vietnam in the third quarter of this year increased 14.9 percent against the same period last year, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

However, the figure was still lower than those in the first and second quarters which stood at 30.9 percent and 23.1 percent, respectively. 

Between January and September, Vietnam welcomed some 11.61 million foreign holiday-makers, a year-on-year rise of 22.9 percent, with visitors by air, road and sea up 17.4 percent, 62.1 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. 

Tourists from Asia rose 27.2 percent; Europe, 9.8 percent; America, 12.5 percent; Oceania, 6.3 percent; and Africa, 19.5 percent.

The US has remained one of Vietnam’s top five tourism markets with the number of vacationers to the country exceeding 614,000 in 2017, up 11 percent against 2016. As of August 2018, Vietnam had served 486,000 US holiday-makers, a year-on-year increase of 14.5 percent.-VNA