Published:  16:48 Sunday - March 11, 2012

Hoang Thi Diep, Deputy General Director of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism said Japan has been in the top five leading markets of tourists traveling to Vietnam recent years. Vietnam Tourism Department set the target in 2015 there will be 7.5 million international tourists, including 1 million Japanese visitors.

Japanese tourists enjoy the destinations having beautiful landscapes, historical monuments, shopping areas, specific cuisine and the friendliness of the native people. In the past 10 years, the number of Japanese visitors to Vietnam has been increasing, except for 2003, when Sars epidemic happened around the world and 2008-2009, when the world economic recession occurred.

Vietnam has significant advantages to attract Japanese tourists such as: stable political security, 15 days visa to be exempt from Japanese guests traveling to Vietnam, near distance between Vietnam and Japan (only 5 hour direct flight), many cultural similarities between two countries, good diplomatic relationship and various tourism resources of Vietnam which meet the Japanese people’s tastes. However, Vietnam Tourism Department has some difficulties like: limited expense for promoting tourism, no tourism promotion office in Japan, lack of marketing strategies for this market, limited tourism products quality…

Vietnam will put much effort to complete the target of receiving 1 million Japanese guests in 2015. One of the important measures to contribute to this goal is establishing Vietnam Tourism Promotion Office in Japan. This is also the content in the 2012 work plan of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

In addition, some other useful measures to attract Japanese tourists to Vietnam include: Creating website in Japanese language to promote Vietnam tourism on the base of studying taste characteristics of Japanese market; establishing the group of Vietnam-Japan tourism development, remaining and expanding the direct flights between two countries, stepping up training the Japanese tour guides as well as the human resources to improve customer service quality.