A workshop to enhance tourist exchange between Viet Nam and Japan has been co-organized by the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) and the Embassy of Japan in Viet Nam to mark the 45th anniversary bilateral diplomatic ties.
Vice Chairman of VNAT Ha Van Sieu speaking at the workshop
In his speech at the event, Vice Chairman of VNAT Ha Van Sieu said that for many years, Japan has been the source market of Viet Nam’s tourism and among the top 3 markets sending tourists to the country.
In 2017, Viet Nam greeted nearly 800,000 Japanese tourist arrivals, an 8% increase over a year earlier, while welcomed almost 310,000 Japanese tourists. The number of Vietnamese tourists to the market grew 38% on average during the 2013-2017 period.
Together with the efforts of Japan to exploit the Viet Nam outbound market, the Vietnamese side is actively carrying out promotion activities in Japan with the hope of gaining break-through changes in the growth rate of Japanese tourist to the country in the coming time, he stressed.
Mr. Katsuro Nagai, Deputy Ambassador of Japan to Viet Nam, said that although 2017 saw the highest ever number of Japanese tourists to the country with about 798,000, the figure witnessed a slow growth of only 8% from the previous year.
Explaining the reason, the two sides pointed out obstacles such as the lack of tour guides who can speak Japanese, especially at hot spots favored by Japanese tourists like Da Nang, Hue and Hoi An; the lack of the presence of representative offices for Viet Nam’s tourism in Japan; the visa policy; and poor environmental hygiene.
In discussions, associations, tour operators and hotels of the two sides gave ideas and initiatives to enhance the effectiveness of tourism cooperation and enhance tourism exchange in the near future, contributing to building an action plan which is scheduled to be realized after the 8th session of the Viet Nam – Japan Tourism Cooperation Committee in October 2018.