Vietnam tourism on track for record year

Last year’s total of 7.9m visitors likely to be exceeded by end of October

Vietnam’s international tourism arrivals continue to surge, with the country now having exceeded seven million visitors for the year.

According to the latest data from the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the country welcomed 813,007 overseas visitors in September 2016, up 28.0% year-on-year. This means that for the first nine months of 2016, Vietnam has now welcomed 7.27 million visitors, 25.7% more than the same period last year.

Mainland China and South Korea continue to dominate inbound tourism to Vietnam. In the January-September period, Chinese visitation jumped 57.7% to 1.99m arrivals, while the number of South Korean visitors increased 39.9% to 1.13m. This means that combined, these two source markets contributed 42.9% of visitors to Vietnam during this period.

Other major source markets also contributed more visitors in the first nine months of the year, including Japan (+11.4% to 555,191), the US (+14.5% to 421,649) and Taiwan (+15.7% to 381,993). Arrivals from Russia, Vietnam’s largest European source market, surged 26.5% to 299,069.

Vietnam is now certain to set a full-year record in terms of international arrivals this year, with last year’s total of 7.94m visitors likely to be exceeded by the end of October.