Looking back at 2024: Vietnam's tourism industry is booming

In 2024, the tourism industry is considered a bright spot in Vietnam's socio-economic picture.

Vinh Hy tourist village is located on the banks of a poetic bay. Photo: Nguyen Thanh/VNA

Based on the Party's policies and the orientations of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, many major tourism activities have been organized domestically and internationally. As a result, the tourism industry has achieved many impressive targets in terms of visitors and revenue, becoming a key economic sector, contributing to the socio-economic development of localities and the growth of Vietnam.

Complete the targets

In 2024, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism proactively worked with localities to remove bottlenecks in mechanisms and policies, focusing on developing tourism towards unique products, professional services, convenient and simple procedures, competitive prices, and a bright, green, clean and safe environment. Thanks to that, Vietnam has continued to affirm its reputation as a safe and friendly destination on the regional and world tourism map.

Summarizing the highlights of Vietnam's tourism over the past year, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung said: 2024 marks the first time the Ministry has successfully organized the Vietnam Tourism - Cinema Promotion Program in the United States with the theme "Vietnam - New Destination of World Cinema". The event received high praise from the United States and the world's elite filmmakers. After the conference, many cooperation agreements were signed and at least 5 international film crews will come to Vietnam in the near future.

In addition, many major events were successfully organized, leaving a great echo in the business community and international tourist friends about Vietnam's tourism potential, especially in the fields of rural tourism, film tourism, and discovery tourism. In 2024, the Ministry organized many tourism promotion programs in China, European countries, and the Russian Federation with creative implementation, leaving a good impression and bringing clear results in promoting Vietnam's tourism growth.

Vietnam hosted the 1st International Conference on Rural Tourism in Hoi An (Quang Nam). In particular, the National Tourism Year 2024 was held in Dien Bien province, along with a series of tourism promotion activities in key areas, which boosted tourism growth in most indicators: Number of visitors, revenue, accommodation, food and beverage services, resorts, etc.

The 2024 domestic tourism stimulus program with the theme "Vietnamese people travel to Vietnam - Vietnam I love" has been implemented and organized by many localities to attract tourists, introduce new tourism programs, product packages with good service quality to increase the experience of tourists. Service quality, ensuring security, safety, clean and civilized environment for tourism activities... are focused on improving by the tourism industry.

From the implementation of practical activities, many typical, smart, creative tourism models in the direction of green and sustainable have emerged in localities. These are bright and outstanding colors in the overall tourism picture of Vietnam such as: Hanoi - Come to love, Da Nang - Source of happiness, Quang Ninh - Ha Long Smile, Ho Chi Minh City - Green on every journey...

Ms. Dang Huong Giang, Director of Hanoi Department of Tourism, shared: Renewing tourism products based on the city's strengths is a top priority. Building quality tours and tourism products with many experience values, increasing customer satisfaction - these are the decisive factors to increase customer satisfaction, attract and retain tourists to tourist destinations.

To keep up with the digital transformation trend, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has focused on deploying digital technology applications to develop digital platforms, applications such as: Developing and upgrading the national tourism application Vietnam Travel - Vietnam Travel, the national digital platform for tourism management and business; deploying the "Online - interconnected - multimodal" electronic ticket system, multimedia explanation system. At the same time, monthly tourism information documents are built to introduce the main contents of the results of tourist reception activities with in-depth analysis of the market and trends in searching for Vietnam tourism information on the internet.

In particular, Vietnam has implemented an e-visa policy applicable to citizens of all countries with a temporary stay of up to 90 days, along with expanding unilateral visa exemptions and increasing the temporary stay period to 45 days, creating favorable conditions for international tourists to come to Vietnam.

Mr. Nguyen Huu Y Yen, Chairman of the Board of Members of Saigontourist Travel Service Company Limited, shared that in 2024, the new, more open visa policy for international tourists has brought about a leap in the number of visitors and revenue from international visitors. Countries that have opened 45-day visas have recorded a growth in the number of visitors to businesses of up to 20%.

With high determination, great efforts, drastic and creative actions, Vietnam's tourism industry in 2024 has achieved many impressive figures, growing significantly compared to the same period in 2023 such as: International tourists to Vietnam reached nearly 17.5 million arrivals (up 38.9%); domestic visitors are estimated at 110 million arrivals (up 1.6%); total revenue from tourists is estimated at about 840,000 billion VND (up 23.8%).

The World Travel Awards (WTA) continues to honor Vietnam in three categories: Asia's Leading Destination, Asia's Leading Heritage Destination and Asia's Leading Nature Destination.

Become a key economic sector

International tourists visit Ngoc Son Temple (Hanoi). Photo: Thanh Tung/VNA

The year 2024 ends with much joy, pride and excitement for domestic tourism workers. However, the tourism industry still has many concerns and worries about how to turn Vietnam's tourism potential into real and attractive products, and how to make Vietnamese tourism take off in 2025 and the following years.

According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, by 2025, the tourism industry aims to fully recover to pre-COVID-19 levels; strive to welcome 22-23 million international visitors, 120-130 million domestic visitors and maintain a domestic visitor growth rate of 8-9% per year. The industry also aims to directly contribute 6-8% to GDP with VND980-1,050 billion in revenue, creating 5.5 million jobs, including 1.8 million direct jobs. By 2030, tourism aims to become a spearhead economic sector, developing towards green growth; welcoming 35 million international visitors and 160 million domestic visitors.

Mr. Ha Van Sieu, Deputy Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, stated that in order to achieve the goal of international market growth, the Vietnamese tourism industry will select markets based on the following criteria: visa-free markets; convenient flight connections; high growth potential and capacity; and quality. In addition, the Vietnamese tourism industry needs to coordinate with relevant parties to remove bottlenecks in development institutions and bottlenecks that hinder investment in tourism development.

On the threshold of the new year 2025, the Vietnamese tourism industry hopes to receive support from Vietnamese representative agencies abroad to maximize opportunities and potentials, thereby contributing to enhancing the country's position in the international arena in the coming time; strengthen connections and coordinate the organization of "Vietnam Culture Day/Week" events abroad to promote culture, tourism and sports cooperation. At the same time, actively exploit digital media in promoting Vietnamese culture, proposing cooperation with major international media platforms to build the image of a prosperous and rich-in-identity Vietnam.

The tourism industry will also focus on exploiting and expanding many key and potential markets; building many new high-quality products such as conference tourism (MICE), golf tourism, etc.; investing in improving the quality of human resources and promoting the application of digital technology in management and product development to develop tourism into a spearhead economic sector of Vietnam.

Source: https://baoquangninh.vn/nhin-lai-nam-2024-khoi-sac-nganh-du-lich-viet-nam-3336368.html