The Viet Nam International Travel Mart (VITM) 2017 officially kicked off on Thursday at the International Exhibition Centre in Ha Noi.

Themed “Ha Noi – Destination of Vietnamese tourism”, the four-day fair showed businesses’ support for the city’s efforts to promote tourism as its key economy, said Vu The Binh, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Tourism Association (VNTA) and head of the organising board.

Bình added that most of the products at the event focus on promoting tourism of the capital city, helping to attract more tourists to Ha Noi.

Huynh Vinh Ai, deputy minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, said Viet Nam’s tourism had seen impressive development over the past few years.

The Government has paid attention to promulgating important policies to encourage the country’s tourism development. Especially, the Resolution No 08-NQ/TW on tourism development was promulgated with the aim to developing the sector become one of the key economic sectors has become an important landmark for the industry.

Ai noted that in the trend of globalisation and competition, promotion activities have been vital in maintaining and expanding the tourism market.

Such events could contribute to affirm the capital’s trademark as a big tourism hub in the country and the region.

The event has seen the participation of over 650 enterprises and tourism agencies from 43 cities and provinces of Viet Nam and 25 countries and territories around the world.

Besides traditional markets such as Japan, South Korea, Western Europe and ASEAN, the fair welcomed travel firms from the United States (US) Tourism Association.

The US travel enterprises will have a meeting with Vietnamese travel companies and sign a co-operation deal with the VNTA. The deal is expected to help Vietnamese travel companies attract more American tourists as well as open up more opportunities for Vietnamese to travel to the US.

There are more than 150,000 low-cost air tickets and 20,000 package tours at reasonable prices offered by travel companies and airlines at the fair. These activities are expected to give a fillip to the local tourism market. — VNS