Khanh Hoa welcomes first visitors in Year of the Tiger

The 138 visitors were presented with flowers, New Year gifts and lucky money in accordance with the traditional custom of first footing.

Director of the provincial Department of Tourism Nguyen Thi Le Thanh said that with events to celebrate first tourists in the New Year and diverse activities planned for the whole year, the province’s tourism sector hopes for a good year in 2022.

She said that this year, Khanh Hoa aims to receive over 1.2 million visitors, doubling that in 2021, including 40,000 foreigners, and revenue of 4 trillion VND (176.6 million USD), up 80 percent over the previous year.

Defining domestic market as the main market of the Khanh Hoa tourism in 2022, the province will conduct numerous activities to lure visitors, including tourism roadshows in domestic localities such as Hanoi, Hai Phong, Ho Chi Minh City, and Can Tho, as well as foreign countries including Russia, the Republic of Korea and China.

Khanh Hoa, home to famous beach towns Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, on November 25, 2021 welcomed the first international tourists with vaccine passports after a long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is among localities selected to roll out the pilot “vaccine passport” programme, which is divided into three phases, starting from last November.

In the first phase that starts this month, designated places and tourism facilities in the selected localities could receive foreign tourists within package tourism programmes arriving via either charter flights or international commercial flights.

In the second phase that takes effect from January 2022, the scale of the pilot plan will be expanded by connecting destinations through regular charter and international commercial flights.

Vietnam’s tourism market will fully open to international tourists in the last phase, the starting time of which will be based on the contemporary pandemic situation on the evaluation of the two previous phases./.