Viet Nam tourism growing faster than in Thailand, Japan: Nikkei Asia

According to the Japan-based media group, Viet Nam grew its share of inbound travel in the first five months of 2023, coming in third behind Japan and Thailand among Asian destinations. It jumped from fifth place in 2019, the last year of pre-pandemic travel.

Agoda CEO Omri Morgenshtern told reporters on Thursday that more Koreans are traveling to Japan and Viet Nam. He attributed this to Korean factories that opened in Viet Nam in the past two decades, establishing a community of expatriates who spread word about Viet Nam back home.

Viet Nam welcomed nearly 4.6 million international arrivals in the first five months of 2023, soaring 12.6-fold from the same period last year, equivalent to 57.5 percent of the full-year target, announced the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Regarding key markets, South Korea continues to have the most visitors coming to Viet Nam with over 1.3 million arrivals, followed by China (nearly 399,000), the U.S. (over 307,000), and China's Taiwan (nearly 252,000).

The number of domestic visitors during this time reached 50.5 million.

In May, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh signed off the Government's Resolution No 82/NQ-CP on the main tasks and measures for accelerating effective and sustainable tourism recovery and development.

It specified many groups of measures for developing tourism into a key economic sector so as to turn Viet Nam into one of the 30 countries with the highest tourism competitiveness./.