Vietnam targets one million Japanese visitors in 2015

Vietnam will bolster tourism cooperation with Japan with an ambitious target to more than double the number of Japanese arrivals into the country to one million in 2015 from the current 400,000, a local tourism official said.
Hoang Thi Diep, deputy director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), told the Daily after a meeting with Japanese partners in Hanoi on Thursday that Japan would help Vietnam in training to realize the target.
“We’ve asked them to help us train tour guides and make promotion activities, and the Japanese official has agreed with us,” Diep said after meeting a high-ranking official of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in the third meeting of the Vietnam-Japan Tourism Cooperation Committee.
She said the Japanese ministry would support the country’s tourism industry to woo more Japanese. It will provide information, and train Japanese-speaking tour guides along with helping entrepreneurs to exchange business.
Japan is one of the top ten source markets for Vietnam’s tourism. Around 355,000 visitors from Japan have visited Vietnam from January through October this year, up 22.2% year-on-year. VNAT has expected the total number of visitors to reach at 400,000 by the end of this year, still smaller than the number of nearly 420,000 guests from Japan in 2007.
Diep said the Japan side in the meeting had suggested some activities to help Vietnam better attract visitors from Japan.
The Japan side suggested that Vietnam’s tourism sector join more travel fairs and conferences in Japan, as stronger participation would help local entrepreneurs have direct meetings with Japanese travel agents, she said.
Vietnam’s tourism should also open its representative office in Japan to boost marketing activities and help travel firms to develop the market.
“Local tour operators still lack chances to meet with Japanese travel agents so stronger cooperation between the tourism departments of the two sides will open more chances for them to meet and exchange business,” she said.
In 2008, the Japanese Association of Travel Agents (JATA) and VNAT inked a memorandum of understanding to boot tourists exchange between the two countries. The association has included Vietnam as one of ten destinations of its Visit World Campaign, a program designed to boost the number of outbound Japanese travelers to 20 million this year.