Up to 2,698,324 foreign visitors were estimated to visit Vietnam during
the first four months of the year, an annual reduction of 12.2 percent.
There were more than 2.2 million airline
passengers, while 439,100 and 24,200 tourists entered Vietnam by road
and water, respectively. All three groups experienced a drop up to 30
percent from 2014.
The volume of Asian
travellers was 1.73 million people, falling 12.9 percent year on year,
with the number of Chinese, Lao, Cambodian, Thai and Indonesian
nationals showing the highest decreases, ranging from 21 to 36 percent.
Meanwhile, more tourists from the Republic of Korea and Singapore
visited Vietnam.
There was also a decrease in
European visitors, with an annual 8.4 percent drop overall. In contrast,
the Americas contributed 229,500 tourists, equalling a year-on-year
increase of 3 percent.
Industry experts will now
start assessing the reasons behind the significant drop, especially as
the number of tourist arrivals was targeted to rise this year.-VNA