Hanoi aims to lure more foreign tourists

According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, August saw 664,985 foreign tourists to Vietnam, a 12 percent increase over July and 7.5 percent increase over the same month last year, with remarkable increases seen from the five European countries with visa exemptions including Spain 159.3 percent, Italy 141.4 percent, Germany 54.1 percent, France 25.8 percent and the UK 25.2 percent. In addition to these five, a number of Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian nations also marked double-digit increases including the Republic of Korea 42.5 percent, Hong Kong-China 36.4 percent, Laos 33.4 percent, Thailand 29.9 percent, Japan 25.9 percent, Singapore 18.7 percent, China 16.4 percent and Malaysia 13.5 percent.

Hanoi’s culture, sports and tourism sector contributed significantly to these increases. According to statistics, nearly 1.13 million foreign tourists came to Hanoi in the first half of 2015, an 8.8 percent increase over the same period last year, with sharp increases noticed from a number of markets including the Republic of Korea 61.1 percent, Thailand 25.8 percent and the US 21.2 percent.

The Hanoi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism aims to boost local tourism so that Hanoi will be able to become one of the national and regional key destinations via promoting a healthy cultural tourist environment and skilled staff while strengthening tourism administration to ensure tourist safety and effectively manage tourist service prices.

The Hanoi People’s Committee has recently issued a directive on overcoming difficulties to boost the local tourism, asking travel companies and agencies and tourism-related service providers across the city to obey to the rules on prices while applying serious sanctions to violations.

Hanoi has implemented tourist safety solutions, including local campaigns to assist tourists and a special force to deal with overly intrusive street vendors.

In the coming time, Hanoi will focus more on raising local people’s awareness of tourism development along with improving state administration of tourism. In addition, it will promote cooperation with the Vietnam Tourism Association, travel companies and hotels to launch market surveys and use the results to create original and attractive tourist products, enhance tourism promotion at home and abroad and develop human resources for tourism.

Through applying drastic measures, Hanoi expects to improve its image while promoting local tourism development to become an internationally-recognized destination.

Thanh Tam