Viet Nam targets to welcome 8 million foreign arrivals in 2023

Total tourism turnover is forecast to reach VND650,000 billion (nearly US$27.7 billion) for the whole year.

The target seems to be achievable as China will reopen borders and lift quarantine after it downgrades its treatment of COVID-19 on January 8.

Chairman of the Viet Nam Tourism Association Vu The Binh said that China's reopening borders is a good signal for Viet Nam's tourism as China was the largest tourist source market of Viet Nam in the pre-pandemic period. 

Data of the General Statistics Office showed that during the 2015-2019 period, the number of visitors from China to Viet Nam witnessed annual growth of over 34 percent. 

In 2019, Viet Nam received 5.8 million arrivals from China, making up one thirds of the total number of international visitors to Viet Nam. 

Last year, Viet Nam only received 3.6 million foreign tourists, or around 70 percent of its initial target. It is equivalent to only 20 percent of arrivals in 2019 before the pandemic when the Southeast Asian nation welcomed a record number of 18 million visitors.

In 2022, with 2.59 million foreign tourists, Asia tourists accounted for over 70 percent of the total number, followed by Europe (508,000) and Americas (388,000).

Nevertheless, domestic tourism is strongly bouncing back, recording more than 101 million visitors last year, higher than all forecasts and up 1.5 times compared to the yearly target of 60 million.