HCM Chi Minh City, the nation’s commercial and tourism hub, hopes to welcome 2.8 million foreign visitors in 2010 after posting the first decline in arrivals since 2003 this year.

Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s commercial and tourism hub, hopes to welcome 2.8 million foreign visitors in 2010 after posting the first decline in arrivals since 2003 this year.

La Quoc Khanh, deputy head of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said the drop of 7 percent in foreign arrivals had been expected since the middle of this year, when the city’s tourism sector began to feel the effects of the economic slump and the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic.

Foreign arrivals to the city in 2009 were estimated at 2.6 million, much lower than the target of 3.1 million set earlier.

The last time the city posted a year-on-year decline in arrivals was in 2003 when the SARS epidemic hit the tourism sector in the entire region was badly affected.

Khanh said he hoped the situation would improve next year. “At first we only set a target of 2.7 million arrivals for 2010. But after tour operators and hotels reported their bookings numbers, we raised it to 2.8 million,” he said Thursday.

Overall arrivals to Vietnam in the first 11 months were down 12.3 percent. Still, the figure in November alone surged 38.6 percent from a year ago, according to the Vietnam National Tourism Administration. The administration expected arrival numbers to continue to go up from the end of this year.

VNN/TBKTSG/Thanh Nien