HCMC – Japanese tourist arrivals this month are expected to increase 6.5% year-on-year despite earlier worries from local tour operators about a slump due to the disaster in the Northeast Asian country, the national tourism authority said.
Japan tourist arrivals remain strong
By Dao Loan - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – Japanese tourist arrivals this month are expected to increase 6.5% year-on-year despite earlier worries from local tour operators about a slump due to the disaster in the Northeast Asian country, the national tourism authority said.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) forecasted that the number of Japanese visitors to the country in May would grow 6.5%, taking the total in the year to date to 204,000, a year-on-year increase of 2.6%. The May figure is highly encouraging as now is the start of the low season for the hospitality industry.
The tourism sector earlier worried that Japanese visitors would travel less after the earthquake and tsunami battered northeastern Japan. Based on the statistics from VNAT, the number of Japanese visitors barely decreased in March and April.
However, local tour operators serving the travelers in the country told the Daily that they need more time to gauge the impact of the disaster on Vietnam’s tourism industry. People who are traveling in this season have booked tours in the past while new tour reservations for the high season late this year are less than in the same period of last year.
Nearly three months since the disaster in Japan, Vietnam’s tourism still has not taken any move to encourage Japanese tourists to come back, and travel firms have therefore called on VNAT to lend a helping hand.
APEX Travel Co., representing some companies serving Japanese tourists, has requested authorities to allow for Japanese tourists to stay in Vietnam up to 30 or 60 days without having to obtain an entry visa, instead of the current 15 days. However, there was no response from the administration office.
Meanwhile, outbound tour operators were starting first activities to restart tours to Japan by arranging fact-finding trips to the country and offering more budget tours to woo local people to Japan.
VNAT has forecasted that despite the low season for the inbound segment from April to September, visitors from Japan, China, and Malaysia would increase this month.
The total number of international visitors this month will reach nearly 526,500, up 37% year-on-year to bring the total number in the first five months of this year to nearly 2.52 million, up 18% year-on-year.
HCMC, the biggest tourism center of the country, has reported 240,000 foreign arrivals this month, a slight fall from April. However, the total number of visitors in the first five months of this year still reached 1.4 million, up 8% year-on-year.