The number of Vietnamese people visiting South Korea, particularly to experience fashion and beauty services, has been growing so rapidly over the last few years that even the Seoul Tourism Organization felt impressed, as the growth beat all expectations.

Vietnamese tourists, like other Southeast Asian visitors, love traveling to South Korea for luxury cosmetic services and products, the organization said as it held a tourism promotion conference called “Seoul Beauty Showroom in Hanoi” in the Vietnamese capital city on Tuesday.

The event was intended to promote tourism activities associated with fashion and beauty experiences in the East Asian country.

Vietnamese arrivals to South Korea have risen 41 percent per annum on average in the last three years, according to Byeon Dong Hyeon, an official from the Seoul Tourism Organization.

Byeon said the tourism organization was themselves impressed by such unexpectedly strong growth, which has put Vietnam on the list of top tourism feeder markets for South Korea in general and Seoul in particular.

Vietnamese visitors' average spending in South Korea is around US$1,200 on a single trip, according to Lee Jae Seong, another Seoul Tourism Organization representative.

The Seoul Tourism Organization attributed the growing number of Vietnamese tourists to South Korea to the fast expansion of air routes connecting the two countries in recent times.

That South Korean culture is popular in Vietnam is also perceived to have a strong influence on Vietnamese people’s decision on where to travel abroad.

Lee added that all Vietnamese visitors to South Korea behave very politely, underlining that he was making “honest and objective remarks” rather than performing an act of courtesy.

According to the Korea Tourism Organization, nearly 500,000 Vietnamese tourists chose South Korea as their destination in 2018.

In the first six months of this year, Vietnamese arrivals to the East Asian country topped 277,000, up more than 31 percent from a year earlier.

To put this in perspective, only 117,000 Vietnamese visited South Korea in 2013.

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