
Hanoi – Vietnam welcomed 3.8 million foreign tourists in the first
seven months of 2020, a year-on-year decline of 61.6 percent, the General
Statistics Office announced on July 29.
Asian
visitors accounted for the lion’s share, 73 percent, down 63.9 percent year-on-year.
Arrivals
from most major markets, including China, the Republic of Korea, and Japan, declined
substantially in January-July, with only those from Cambodia rising, by 88.9 percent.
Tourists
from Europe fell 48.7 percent year-on-year.
In
July alone, 139,000 foreigners arrived in Vietnam, mainly by road, a
month-on-month increase of 8.7 percent but down 98.9 percent against the same
period last year, as the country has yet to open its doors to international
tourists.
Meanwhile,
the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism said that following a domestic
tourism stimulus plan, many localities recorded month-on-month surges in June of
at least 1.5-fold in domestic holidaymaker numbers.
They
included Sa Pa in Lao Cai province and also Quang Ninh province in the north,
Binh Dinh and Phu Yen provinces in the central region, and Phu Quoc Island, off
the coast of the Mekong Delta’s Kien Giang province./.