Tourism industry targets to make breakthroughs in 2025

As of late November, Viet Nam welcomed over 15.8 million international visitors. In November only, the number of foreign visitors valued 1.7 million, setting a new record height, representing a year-on-year increase of nearly 40 percent.

Hence, the tourism industry is expected to welcome 17 million foreign guests, materializing the preset goal in 2024.

A large number of enterprises launched effective tourism promotion programs to welcome more foreign visitors, higher than during post-pandemic period. Especially, some localities fulfilled their preset goals from two to three months ahead of schedules namely Da Nang, Khanh Hoa, Binh Dinh, Ninh Binh, Ninh Thuan and Thanh Hoa.

Experts attributed the surge to the increasing number of international visitors from the Northeast Asian market, growing European market thanks to 45-day temporary stay duration with exempted visa requirement for citizens of 13 countries.

Meanwhile, aviation tourism cooperation serves as the vital strategy for Viet Nam to attract foreign arrivals in 2024. Viet Nam has made positive progresses to broaden its flight network which is connected directly with key markets while Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat transit airports have been upgraded to increase the number of passengers.

The Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism has accelerated the digital transformation progress to deploy a synchronous and unified smart tourism ecosystem nationwide.

In 2024, activities to promote and advertise Vietnamese tourism internationally have also been innovated in content and methods and are quite vibrant.

Viet Nam Tourism has organized many national tourism promotion events in Laos, Australia, the RoK, Russia, France, Germany, Italy. The Prime Minister attended the Viet Nam Tourism Promotion and Cultural Cooperation Forum held in Korea (July 2024). At the end of September 2024, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism organized the first Viet Nam Tourism-Cinema Promotion Program in the U.S., with many agreements signed.

Viet Nam was proud to receive three awards, including "Asia's Leading Destination 2024", "Asia's Leading Heritage Destination 2024" and "Asia's Leading Nature Destination 2024". Noticeably, this is the 6th time in the last seven years Viet Nam is titled "Asia's Leading Destination" (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), affirming the position of Viet Nam tourism as an attractive destination, a bright star on the tourism map of Asia and the world.

Seizing trends to make breakthroughs

Under Decision 509/QD-TTg, approving the Master Plan for Tourism Development from 2021 to 2030, with a vision to 2045, signed by the Prime Minister, Viet Nam aims for 25 to 28 million international tourists and 130 million domestic tourists next year.

Tourism sector is expected to directly contribute 8-9 percent and 13-14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 and 2030, respectively.

The country is set to tap into the markets of tourists with high spending and long stay, along with new markets in terms of golf, sports, and adventure tourism during 2026 - 2030.

Efforts are being made to revive traditional markets and attract emerging ones like India and Middle Eastern countries between 2021 and 2025./.