Hanoi’s authorities have urged the municipal tourism sector to seek
measures to attract more tourists to the capital, especially foreigners,
in the coming time.
The number of overseas holiday-makers to
Hanoi incessantly surged in recent years, bringing an increasing
turnover for the sector. In the first half of 2014, Hanoi greeted
1.39 million foreign visitors, a 17.4 percent year-on-year rise.
Of the total, the number of Chinese tourists to the city went up 30
percent compared to that in the same period last year.
Following
China’s illegal placement of its oil rig in Vietnam’s waters in early
May, Hanoi saw a remarkable decrease of overseas tourists to the city,
particularly Chinese arrivals. In the face of this, the
municipal authorities have asked the sector to direct its attention to
other markets such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore
and Russia.
The city plans to coordinate with the Vietnam
Tourism Association to organise annual promotion activities in Japan,
while working closely with Japan-based representative office of
Vietnamese tour operators to help domestic travel agents easily
access the potential market, which sees about 20 million tourists
travelling abroad each year.
In additions, Hanoi’s travel
agencies will actively participate in tourism fairs in other markets to
introduce their services and products. They will also seek to promote
the city’s image on well-known and prestigious tourism websites in the
world such as Trip Advisor, Smart Travel Asia and Google.
Along
with the above-mentioned efforts, the city also focuses on improving the
quality of products and services, while expanding promotional
programmes with the involvement of other areas related to tourism.
Hanoi
will set up a tourism promotion plan for the 2015-2020 period, towards
reaching a sustainable tourism growth in the future.-VNA