Tourism industry greets the 5 millionth int'l tourist

On December 24th, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism-MoCST) welcomed it’s five-millionth visitor to Vietnam on flight VN 901 from Beijing to Hanoi, at Noi Bai International Airport.
The event attracted the attendance of MoCST's Vice Minister Ho Anh Tuan, VNAT's General Director Nguyen Van Tuan and delegates of the MoCST, VNAT, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Communication and Transport and Press agencies...
The VNAT presented a gift and an insignia to Chinese visitor Zhu Ying, the five-millionth foreign visitor of Vietnam this year, who descended at Noi Bai National Airport in the evening of Dec. 24. She was also offered a-two-ways ticket of Vietnam Airlines and a package tour of Hue-Da Nang-Hoi An for two people by the Vietnam-Hanoi Tourism Company.
Becoming the 5 millionth tourist of Vietnam tourism is an extremely luck, Zhu Ying said. She also thanked for the formal welcome of Vietnam in this X'mas evening.
The tourism sector also presented gifts and insignias to two other Chinese tourists, who were the 4,999,999th and 5,000,001st visitor to Vietnam.
China remains "leading" tourist market to Vietnam, followed by Korea, US, Taiwan, Australia, France, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia.
The 2010 is the first year that Vietnam set a record growth of foreign tourists with an increase of 1.2 million people from last year.
This year also sees the highest number of foreign arrivals to Vietnam over the past 20 years including 250,000 arrivals in 1990, the 1-millionth visitor (1994), the 2-millionth (2000), the 3-millionth (2005), the 4-millionth (2007) .
And the 5-millionth on Dec/24/2010 remarked that the tourism sector has over-fulfilled the yearly target with 96,000 billions VND in turnover, increasing by 37% over last year.
The achievements were attributable to tourism promotion campaigns launched in 2009 and 2010.
VNAT's General Director Nguyen Van Tuan described it as an important event of the tourism sector, turning Vietnam into one of the leading destinations of Southeast Asia as well as affirming the position of Vietnam on the world’s tourism map.