VietNamNet Bridge - In 2012, about 3.5 million Vietnamese traveled abroad, of which China alone attracted 1.1 million Vietnamese visitors.

Mr. Vu The Binh, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, said the tourism industry does not have data on Vietnamese visitors who travel abroad. The above figure is calculated based on the reports of some overseas tourism promotion agencies about the favorite destinations of Vietnamese.

Accordingly, each year about 1.1 million Vietnamese tourists went to China, 1 million to Cambodia, 500,000 to Thailand, 300,000 to Singapore, 200,000 to Malaysia and 110,000 to South Korea, not to mention the number of visitors to Europe, the United States, etc.

"In the past five years, this segment grew roughly 20% per year. Vietnam has become the source markets of the tourism industry of many countries," Binh said.

Binh added that Vietnamese tourists are quite generous and they spend a lot during their overseas tours. According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand, on average each visitor from Vietnam spends about $1,200 per trip. The Chinese tourism authorities also said that Vietnamese tourists spend about $1,000 a trip.

"On average, each year Vietnamese spend over $3.5 billion on foreign tours. This is a huge market," Binh said.

According to him, the problem behind these numbers is that the domestic tourism must enhance competitiveness, including product quality, advertising and marketing activities to attract customers in the country, to compete with tourism promotion agencies of other countries.

In addition, it is also the time for the tourism sector to tighten control overseas tourism to ensure the interests of Vietnamese tourists.

"The tourism industry is only interested in the domestic market and foreign tourists. With revenue of billions of US dollars each year, it's time to pay more attention to outbound tourism", Binh said.

Compiled by Nam Nguyen