International tourists who buy package tours as part of the promotion programme”Viet Nam – Your destination” will not have to pay for visas.

International tourists who buy package tours as part of the promotion programme”Viet Nam – Your destination” will not have to pay for visas.

The Culture, Sports and Tourism Ministry announced yesterday that Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung had agreed with its proposal to exempt the visa fees before the end of the year.

The ministry would now work with the Public Security and the Foreign Ministries to ensure the issue of the visas was transparent.

The promotion includes the Impressive Grand Sale 2010 in Ha Noi, Da Nang and HCM City and a programme to encourage Vietnamese in France, the US, Britain and Australia to visit their motherland.

The new policy was expected to attract more international tourists and ensure the stable development of the tourism industry.

Increased visitor numbers to Viet Nam have been attributed in part to the effective promotion of key markets.

The Government has also required the ministry to build and complete long-term plans for the promotion of tourism, especially a development strategy by 2020 and towards 2030.

The ministry will set standards for rating service facilities, products and the tourism environment in the cities and provinces and review tourism policies.

The purpose is to create more favourable conditions for tourism-industry enterprises.

The ministry is also required to devise policies to attract investment from enterprises and overseas Vietnamese to promote and advertise Viet Nam’s tourism industry, especially in other countries.

The Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism reports that the number of international tourists increased 34.2 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of this year.

The administration attributes most of the increase to economic recovery.

The number of Chinese tourists increased 89.2 per cent in the first nine months against the same months of last year to 676,000.

The number of South Koreans increased 29.4 per cent to 365,000; Japanese 18.7 per cent to 318,000 and American 2.4 per cent to 325,000.

The recovery has made the administration confident it can surpass its yearly target and greet 5 million international visitors this year. The target was 4.2 million international visitors, a year-on-year increase of 10 per cent, said its director Nguyen Van Tuan.

Source: VNS