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Foreign arrivals up slightly
International arrivals into Vietnam increased 0.6 percent year on year to 4.3 million in 2008, reported the General Statistics Department.
The figure, however, represented the industry’s failure to meet its yearly target set at between 4.8 and 5 million arrivals.
December, which is considered the heyday of the hospitality industry for Christmas holidays, saw a slowdown the influx of foreign tourists as compared to the previous year.
Major downturns were seen at the Japanese, the Republic of Korea and Taiwanese markets while Singaporeans, Chinese and Thais made slight increases of 14.6 percent, 13.1 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, over the previous year.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) largely blamed global economic crisis for the industry’s slow growth besides domestic economic volatility and problems on infrastructure, service quality and poor human resources.
“These problems have to some extents made Vietnam less attractive,” admitted VNAT.
To solve the problems, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism promised of assistance to localities in improving their products and diversifying services with the focus on coastal and islands advantages.
The VNAT will join the efforts by establishing links between the civil air industry and travel agents to further tap markets of great potential such as the RoK, Japan , China and the US .
The industry has planned to open more regional coastal and island tours of Cambodia , Thailand , China and Singapore and launch promotion campaigns abroad.
As part of the efforts, Hanoi will host the ASEAN Tourist Forum (ATF)-2009 from January 5-12, which is expected to recover the ailing regional tourism industry from global economic downturns.
VNA
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