Foreign visitors to Vietnam will continue to increase by this year-end and beyond partly because of a positive visa policy, said an official of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.
Nguyen Van Tuan, head of the VNAT, said that after 13 consecutive months of a drop in numbers, the total number of foreign tourists recovered from July this year.The figure gained a year-on-year surge of 5.1 per cent to 593,566 foreign tourists in July, of 7.5 per cent to 664,985 in August and 8.3 per cent to 626,324 in September.
That meant the tourism industry had overcome difficulties of the past but it could not reach its target on increasing the number of foreign visitors to 8 million for this year, he said.
The recovery in arrival numbers was mainly due to positive effects of visa exemptions for five Western European countries.
After the visa exemptions, visitors from the United Kingdom increased by 16 per cent, from Italy by 25 per cent and from Germany by 15 per cent. Spanish visitors went up by 9 per cent and visitors from France rose by 8 per cent.
The increase in visitors from Western European supported the growth of foreign visitors while visitors from China, Vietnam's largest tourist market, dropped. By this year-end, the domestic tourism industry expects the growth to continue because the remaining months are part of the tourist season, Tuan said.
If the recovery continues, Vietnam will receive 7.8 million foreign visitors for this whole year, a figure similar to 2014.
To retain the growth, the VNAT has suggested to the government that visa exemptions be given to visitors from 19 key tourism markets, especially European countries.
The government should increase the days of visa exemption from the current 15 under the law on entry, exit, transit and residence of foreigners to attract more foreign visitors because they often undertake long journeys, he said.