National Tourism Year in Thai Nguyen province.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) yesterday announced the top ten tourism events of 2007.
1. National Tourism Year in Thai Nguyen province. This year Thai Nguyen province welcomed more than 1 million visitors, including 25,000 foreign tourists, 50% up over that of last year.
2. Vietnam welcomed its 4th million foreign visitor. On December 6, the 4th million foreign tourist arrived in Vietnam. This marked the development of Vietnam tourism sector, creating a base for the target of receiving 6-6.5 million international visitors in 2010.
By the end of this month, the number of international tourists to Vietnam will reach 4.2 million, a 17% increase over the last year. This is the highest increase in the number of foreigners to Vietnam over the past six consecutive years.
3. Vietnam advertised its tourism industry on CNN. On October 10, Vietnamese tourism was broadcast on CNN for the first time and has been broadcast 200 times within three months.
4. Successful organisation of tourism ministerial meeting of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. For the first time, Tourism Ministers of the three countries signed a joint statement to cooperate on the “Three countries, one destination” programme.
5. The campaign for the selection of Ha Long Bay as a Natural World Wonder. A campaign calling on Vietnamese people and international visitors to vote for Ha Long Bay as one of the seven Natural World Wonders was launched and received widespread support.
6. VNAT conducted surveys on potential new tour plans. This year VNAT co-operated with reputed travel companies to carry out surveys on the status and successes of the tourism industry, which will serve as the foundation for designing new tours in 2008. This year also marks the development in number of travel agencies with 592 international and more than 10,000 domestic travel agencies.
7. The Da Lat Flower Festival 2007 took place in the resort city of Da Lat, in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, from December 15-21. The festival gathered over 100 flower exporters and traders from 24 provinces and cities of Vietnam and seven other flower exporting countries.
8. A boom in foreign-invested tourism projects. In the January – October period, there were 41 foreign-invested hotel projects, totaling US $1.773 billion in registered capital, up 17.2% compared to the same period 2006. From 1998 to October 2007, Vietnam welcomed 229 foreign-invested tourism projects, with total capital of $6.084 billion.
9. The 10th birthday of VNAT’s website www.vietnamtourism.com. By December 22, over 9.8 million readers had visited the web address www.vietnamtourism.com. With five language versions – Vietnamese, French, English, Chinese and Japanese.
10. The number of foreign tourists visiting the central region by road has increased. The number of foreign tourists, mainly visitors from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to the central region this year soared, making ASEAN the primary market of the Vietnamese tourism industry.
Source: Nhandan
