At present Vietnam applies an electronic visa programme for Australian tourists, helping to shorten the visa processing time to between three and five days.

At the recent Vietnam - Australia Tourism Conference in Melbourne, Nguyen Trung Khanh, director of the VNAT, emphasised that the implementation of a range of tourism promotion activities by Australian firms operating in the country has served to affirm active Vietnamese support for Australian businesses.

Simultaneously, Australian enterprises have also dispatched famtrip delegations to survey Vietnamese tourist destinations in an effort to promote Vietnamese tourism among Australian people, Khanh said.

He revealed that the country will arrange a scheme specifically seeking to promote Vietnamese tourism in Australia this September

“We hope to receive support from Australia’s tourism management agencies so that the event can be successfully organized, thereby accelerating tourism development and enhancing two-way exchange of visitors,” Khanh noted.

According to industry insiders, in order for Australian visitors to stay longer and spend more whilst visiting Vietnam, apart from easing visa requirements, the local tourism industry should strive to create diverse attractive tourism products.

Furthermore, experts also underlined the need to launch more direct flights to several cities in Australia as a way of making travel among the two countries more convenient.

VOV