Vietnam attracts over 7.5m foreign visitors in 2013

Vietnam is expected to receive 7.572 million international visitors in 2013, presenting a year-on-year increase of 10.6 percent, said Vietnam's General Statistics Office (GSO) on Tuesday. Of the foreign tourists to Vietnam in 2013, 4.64 million people visited the country for tourism and resort, up 12.2 percent year- on-year. Some 1.26 million people and 1.27 million people came for business and relative visiting respectively, said GSO. China, South Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia and Australia are among the largest sources of international arrivals to Vietnam during the period, according to GSO. In 2013, the country greeted 1.9 million visitors from China ( up 33.5 percent year-on-year), 747,700 from South Korea (up 6.8 percent), 604,100 from Japan (up 4.8 percent), said the statistics office. During the 12 month-period, Vietnam's tourism experienced decrease in the number of foreign visitors in some markets including the United States (432,200 person-times, down 2.6 percent year-on-year), China's Taiwan (399,000 person-times, down 2.5 percent), and France (209,900 person-times, down 4.4 percent) among others. According to a national strategy on Vietnam's tourism development until 2020 and vision to 2030, Vietnam's tourism will be developed as a key economic sector providing high-quality tourism products with bold brand identity and national culture that can be competed with those of other countries in the region and the world, said the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism under Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Vietnam plans to attract eight million international tourists and 40 million domestic tourists in 2014 with a revenue of 220 trillion Vietnamese dong (10.42 billion U.S. dollars) from tourism sector, said the administration.