Foreign tourists arrivals down 25 percent in October

The number of international visitors to Vietnam in October reached some 228,000, down 25 percent from last month, said the General Statistics Office (GSO).
Specifically, those coming to Vietnam by air and sea dropped against the same period last year to 158,000 and 3,000, respectively. Only those traveling by land rose, by 72.2 percent.
More than three million international visitors arrived in Vietnam in the past ten months, a decline of 16.3 percent from the same period last year. The biggest decrease was seen in the visitors coming from the Republic of Korea (over 24 percent), followed by China, Thailand and Taiwan.
The drops were attributable to the global economic crisis and the impact of the A/H1N1 flu.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism says that the target of receiving 3.7-3.8 million foreign tourists this year can be achieved with a policy of exempting tourists to Vietnam from entry visa charges through the end of the year, and the third Asian Indoor Games being held for the first time in Vietnam.
The agency has taken various stimulus measures and launched tourism promotions inside the country and abroad to attract more tourists as well as investment in the tourism sector.
The tourism sector has proposed that foreign embassies in the country help promote Vietnam’s National Tourism Year through their information networks, and that members of the Asian Network of Major Cities 21 and the Council for the Promotion of Tourism in Asia (CPTA) advertise the year of Vietnam Tourism in major Asian cities.