Nguyen Van Tuan said the local tourism industry had achieved increasing arrivals from China as well as markets in Northeast and Southeast Asia in the year to date.

“These are the markets that we focused our marketing resources on during the difficult period last year,” he told the Daily on the sidelines of a seminar organized in HCMC on Tuesday to promote the airports of Can Tho, Phu Quoc and Lien Khuong among travel firms and airlines.

VNAT’s figures showed the number of visitors from China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia started to grow from early this year and accelerated to a double-digit rate from the second quarter of this year.

Arrivals from China registered the strongest recovery with year-on-year growth even more than doubling in March and April. The ASEAN market Thailand has sustained a continuous expansion of over 20% in tourist arrivals in Vietnam while the number of French travelers has increased 10.4% and higher since February.

The number of Australian visitors to Vietnam jumped 24.5% in March and has since maintained a high growth momentum throughout the second quarter. Tuan said Australia was one of the major visitor-generating markets alongside Russia and other markets in Asia and western Europe as well as North America.

He believed with the strong recovery from the major markets, the number of international visitors for 2010 would surpass 4.2 million, which is the target that the local tourism industry set earlier this year.

Vietnam has attracted 2.91 million international travelers in the year to date and has five more months to beat the target. The country is expected to welcome seven to eight million by 2015 and 11-12 million by 2020 as envisaged in a tourism development strategy for this decade.

Tuan said Vietnam had been gradually building itself as an emerging destination for international leisure and business travelers. “So, attracting more international visitors year after year is a decisive factor to sustainable performance of the country’s tourism industry.”

The year-on-year rise in international visitors was even more important than increasing the number of repeat travelers in the current situation of Vietnam, Tuan told the Daily when asked about opinions that Vietnam was a destination for only one-time visits as the country still lacked products and services for travelers.

Tuan explained the majority of travelers wanted to explore new destinations and nations during their holidays, except the MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) guests and resort lovers. But, he acknowledged the industry had made efforts to diversify products and services to draw repeat visitors.

He said the industry had tried to attract more foreign direct investment during the challenging year 2009, when international arrivals in Vietnam dropped 10.9% to more than 3.77 million over 2008. The evidence was that US$8.8 billion out of around US$22 billion in FDI in Vietnam last year pledged for tourism and hotel projects, the highest-ever amount committed to these areas.

Tuan said tourism would be developed into a spearhead industry with the emphasis on quality, efficient performance, branding and the crucial role of enterprises in the industry.

Tourism generated VND70 trillion in 2009 and contributed more than 4% of the country’s gross domestic product. The proportion is forecast to account for 8% of GDP by 2020.