VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is planning to hold more cultural and tourism festivals in foreign countries like South Korea, Japan, Russia and Norway this year to promote inbound travel.

Nguyen Van Tinh, head of the ministry’s International Cooperation Bureau, told the Daily that along with such festivals, the bureau would arrange familiarization trips for foreign media to look into the country’s tourism potentials.

Last year there were 22 groups of foreign media representatives visiting the nation and according to the bureau, the number will be higher this year. In particular, some foreign media teams will come here to organize game shows through which viewers can see images of the country.

In these promotion activities, the bureau will give priority to attracting Japanese tourists to come back after the disaster in March.

“In addition to a festival set for September, we will organize a big concert in Vietnam in October, featuring performances by famous Japanese music bands, and around 2,500 fans from Japan will come for the event,” he said.

Tinh said the country’s tourism authority was pinning high hopes on the Japanese market as it had been growing steadily after the earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan.

“Visitors from Vietnam’s third largest market were briefly down following the disaster. But we’ve seen a pickup of Japanese tourist arrivals in recent months and the total number this year is expected to be the same as last year,” Tinh said.

According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, Japanese tourist arrivals last month increased 6.5% year-on-year, taking the total the year to last month to 204,000, a year-on-year improvement of 2.6%.

Source: SGT