Foreign visitors to the central city of Da Nang (Source: VNA)
The number of foreign visitors to Vietnam in January is estimated to expand 16.6 percent month-on-month and 32.8 percent year-on-year, reaching 1.99 million, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
This marked the highest figure so far due to high travel demand for the traditional Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday.
Of the total, those travelling by air increased by 38.9 percent, while arrivals by sea rose by 231.5 percent.
In January, tourists from Asia accounted for 77.4 percent of the total, 39.9 percent higher than that of the same period last year. Arrivals from China surged by 72.6 percent, while those from Thailand, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Malaysia climbed 40.1 percent, 20.4 percent, 19.3 percent, 11.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively.
The number of European visitors in the reviewed period witnessed a yearly increase of 11.5 percent. Of which, those from Russia saw the highest rise of 16.1 percent, followed by Germany, the UK and France with respective expansions of 9.6 percent, 8.7 percent and 5.3 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of tourists from America was up 19 percent year-on-year, mainly from the US, the GSO said.
It added that in the last days of January, Vietnamese travel agencies attended the International Tourism Fair (FITUR 2020) in Spain.
Vietnam’s participation at the event is hoped to actively contribute to attracting more Spanish-speaking visitors to the Southeast Asian nation./.