Nearly 597,000 foreigners visited Viet Nam in November, an increase of 23.2 per cent month-on-month and 39.7 times the number of last November.
Viet Nam’s tourism reopening began in earnest with the resumption of international flights in the middle of March this year.
According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), in the first 11 months of this year, more than 2.95 million international visitors arrived in Viet Nam
The total figure is 21.1 times higher than that of the same period last year, but down 81.9 per cent on 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and still falls short of the 2022 target of five million foreign arrivals.
The number of international tourists travelling to Viet Nam by air accounts for 88.9 per cent; 11.1 per cent came by road, and 0.03 per cent by sea.
Foreign tourists visiting downtown HCM City on xich lo (cyclos). — VNA/VNS Photo Hong Dat
The majority of tourists, 2.076 million, came from other Asian countries, up 17.5 times compared to the first 11 months of last year. European visitors numbered 415,600 (up 29.8 times); 323,400 came from the Americas (up 67.1 times); 129,700 from Oceania (up 115.7 times), and 9,500 from Africa (up 7.4 times).
The country is estimated to have taken VND536.3 trillion (US$21.6 billion) from accommodation and catering services, up 56.5 per cent year-on-year, while revenue in the travel and tourism industry was estimated at VND22.9 trillion, a 4.1-fold increase compared to that of the same period last year.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism launched an email system, the first of its kind, to promote Vietnamese tourism at https://mail.vietnam.travel.
Tourism authorities earlier this year set out a target of welcoming five million foreign visitors in 2022.
In 2019, Viet Nam's tourism industry served more than 18 million international visitors and 85 million domestic tourists. However, in 2021, international visitors to Viet Nam only reached 157,300, and the number of domestic tourists was only 40 million. The country’s revenue from tourism last year was VND180 trillion. Travel firms fell into a serious crisis as 90-95 per cent faced severe operational disruption. — VNS