At the meeting, the Ambassador shared his impression on the trans-Viet Nam tour in May with a lot of experiences on beautiful landscapes, unique culture of Viet Nam.

The Ambassador stressed the close cooperation relation between Viet Nam and Sweden for years in many fields including culture and tourism. The Embassy of Sweden in Viet Nam received effective supports from Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on organizing various cultural activities which helped attract a crowd of participants.

Also, he informed that the number of visitors from Sweden to Viet Nam has been increasing. Direct flights connecting Stockholm (Sweden) and Phu Quoc (Viet Nam) was launched in 2016.  He hoped that there would be more flights linking other cities which helps contribute to boosting the visitors flow between the two countries.

Speaking highly of the cooperation between Viet Nam – Sweden, Minister Nguyen Ngoc Thien also recommended that the two sides should support each other to hold a chain of activities aiming to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic relation between Viet Nam and Sweden in 2019.

Minister Nguyen Ngoc Thien informed that tourism has become an important economic sector of Viet Nam which targets to receive 13 million international arrivals this year. Sweden has been considered as one of the potential tourist markets of Viet Nam. In spite of low absolute figure of visitors from Sweden, significant growth was seen. In 2016, Viet Nam received 37,679 visitor arrivals from Sweden, rising 17.7% over 2015; and 32,380 arrivals in the first 8 months of 2017, up 18.9% over the same period last year.  

Also, Minister Thien suggested Sweden to continue to facilitate Vietnamese students and cadres studying in Sweden on culture and tourism fields; besides boosting exchange of art troupes of the two countries.

Thanh Tam