Foreign visitors walk around Hoi An City. International tourist arrivals in Viet Nam broke the 9.44 million mark for January-September. — VNA Photo

International tourist arrivals in Viet Nam broke the 9.44 million mark for January-September, representing a 28.4 per cent rise over the same period last year, the General Statistics Office said.

In September alone, international tourist arrivals reached nearly 976,000, up by 19.6 per cent against the same month last year but dropping by 20.6 per cent over the previous month.

Revenue from the tourism industry in the nine-month period was estimated at VND367 trillion (US$16.5 billion), a year-on-year surge of 26.5 per cent.

During September, the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism promoted tourism road shows in multiple markets to attract visitors, including Denmark, Norway, Poland and Sweden, as well as Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Expedited tourism promotion was expected to help attract more foreign tourists to Viet Nam in the remaining months of this year to fulfill the industry’s target of 13 million international arrivals.

The number of foreign tourists arriving in Viet Nam touched a record high of more than 10 million in 2016, with revenue of VND400 trillion, accounting for 6.8 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Domestic visitors totaled 57.9 million in January-September.

With the aim of developing tourism into one of the key drivers of socio-economic development, Viet Nam set target of attracting 17-20 million international visitors and 82 million domestic visitors by 2020, with revenue of $35 billion, or 10 per cent of the GDP. — VNS