In April, international visitors to Vietnam increased the most since the beginning of the year, including an impressive recovery from the Chinese market. In four months, the number of international visitors to Vietnam exceeded the whole year of 2022.
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The General Statistics Office reports that the number of foreign tourists to Vietnam reached 984.1 thousand arrivals in April 2023, the highest figure since the year's commencement, up 9.9% over the previous month and 9.7 times more than during the same time last year.
In general, even though it is still the off-season, the number of foreign visitors to our country increased in the first four months of the year, reaching a high of nearly 3,684 million arrivals, which is 19 times higher than the same period the previous year.
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In just four months, the arrivals exceeded all of 2022 combined. A little over 3.66 million visitors in the previous year traveled to Vietnam.The Tourism Information Center (VNAT) said that the main growth driver came from China after reopening group tours to Vietnam on March 15. With the most potent market growth, there were 112,000 Chinese tourists to Vietnam in April, more than double (61.5%) from March.
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Besides, markets continued to have good growth, such as Taiwan (+47.6%), Cambodia (+55.6%), Laos (+35.5%), Philippines (+34.7%) ), Australia (+33.6%), Thailand (+13.7%), South Korea (+3.5%).
Important European markets still maintain growth: the UK (+21.4%) and Germany (+4.2%).
Thus, with 1 million arrivals in the first four months of the year, Korea maintained its lead in the number of tourists visiting Vietnam, followed by the US (263,000). China (252,000) moved up to the third position.
Four of the top 10 markets are in Northeast Asia: Japan (160,000 arrivals), Taiwan - China (194,000 arrivals), China (252,000 visitors), and Korea (1.07 million passengers).
With nearly 3.7 million international visitors in the first four months of the year, the tourism industry has achieved almost 50% of the planned target in 2023. It will undoubtedly meet and exceed the target of 8 million international visitors this year.
The National Assembly will propose promulgating a resolution on new visa regulations during its meeting in May 2023. Among other things, it will explore extending the validity of e-visas from no more than 30 days to no more than 90 days, valid once or multiple times; issuing electronic visas to citizens of all countries and territories; Extension of temporary stay for visa-free visitors from 15 to 45 days. This will be a vital driving force to attract international tourists to Vietnam in the coming time.
In contrast, 10.5 million domestic travelers entered the country in April 2023, with 7 million remaining. The total number of domestic visitors in the year's first four months reached 38 million.
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An estimated 196.6 trillion VND in total earnings from tourists came in the year's first four months.