Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) is aggressively looking to increase footfalls from the India market. Vietnam welcomed around 70,000 travellers from India in 2015, reflecting an increase of 27 per cent as compared to 55,000 tourists who visited in 2014.
Speaking about the India market, Vu Nam, Deputy Director General, Tourism Marketing Department, VNAT said, “India is a very vast and a very potential market for us. As of now the numbers from India is very small, last year we saw only around 70000 arrivals from India. When compared to china market from where we get around two million tourists, India is still small. We know that India is an important tourist market for us, but there are a lot of challenges which needs to be addressed. Currently we don’t have a direct flight from Vietnam to India. The Government has now started promoting tourism in India and we are also in talks for a direct flight. We hope that in near future when we have direct flights the numbers will increase. We have spoken to some national carriers to introduce flights to bigger cities in India.”
This year VNAT in association with the Embassy of the Vietnam and OM Tourism had organised Vietnam Tourism Promotion roadshow in New Delhi. Also Vietnam is keen to participate in leading trade fairs in India. Nam added, “We will plan more promotions in India this year. In 2015, we attended the PATA Travel Market in India. We also attend a few trade fairs in India to promote our destination. This year we will organise some Fam trips for Indian tour operators and media. The roadshow which we had in India in April received an excellent response and we will continue to do such roadshows in a bigger scale in India.”
Vietnam is aggressively promoting Phu Quoc Island as a leisure and honeymoon destination by offering visa – free entry to all foreign tourists for a period of 30 days. “We are looking to introduce Phu Quoc Island as a tourist destination. This island is still unexplored and has a lot of virgin beaches. Our government allows all foreign tourists to Phu Quoc visa-free for a period of up to 30 days. Apart from this, Vietnam is home of eight UNESCO world heritages and beautiful beaches. We also have a lot of Hindu temples in Ho Chi Minh City which is of interest for India travellers. We have also opened a new safari zoo which can be a good attraction.”
In 2016, Vietnam received around eight million international tourists, with China being the biggest source markets followed by Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Vietnam has already welcomed around 4.7 million tourists in the first half of this year. “This year, for the first half, the international arrival has increased by 20 per cent so we hope to see a very good growth by end of this year,” Nam added.
