Vietnam greets over 3mil int’l visitors in 8 months
In the first eight months of this year, Vietnam greeted more than 3 million foreign tourists, a nearly 7 percent increase year on year.
In August 2008 alone, the number of foreign tourists to Vietnam reached an estimated 339,000, raising the figure over the past eight months to 3.009 million.
Of this, the number of foreign tourists for travel purposes was more than 1.786 million, up 2.3 percent year on year while the number of foreign tourists for business and visiting relatives reached 596,220, up 40.8 percent and 412,057, up 13 percent year on year, respectively.
Over the past eight months, 77 percent of foreign tourists visited the country via airplane, 19.3 percent via road and the rest via sea.
Compared to the same period of 2007, the number of foreign tourists coming via road increased considerably with a 23.3 percent rise. This shows that Vietnam’s programme of focusing on promoting itself in markets whose locations are near the country is effective.
The Vietnam National Tourism Administration said that, in the future, Vietnam will continue to intensify road tourism activities with Laos and Cambodia, and will connect with ASEAN countries through the two neighbors to further tap these potential markets.
