No-frills carrier Vietjet announced the launch of five new routes linking Hanoi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City with multiple destinations in Japan earlier this week.

The announcement ceremony took place in the central city of Da Nang on Monday within the framework of the Japan - Vietnam Bilateral Tourism Promotion Conference.

The conference was joined by more than 1,000 delegates from Japan, including officials from Japan's National Assembly, the Japanese government, and executives from several major Japanese corporations.

Vietjet’s five new routes include three between Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang and Chubu Centrair International Airport in Nagoya, and two between Hanoi and the Japanese cities of Fukuoka and Kagoshima.

Ticket sales and commercial operations on all five routes are expected to begin in 2020.

Nagoya and Fukuoka are the third and fourth biggest cities in Japan, respectively, after Tokyo and Osaka. 

Meanwhile, the Kagoshima route is expected to service the large Vietnamese population living in the city.

The launch of the new links will increase the total number of Vietjet’s direct routes between Vietnam’s Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang and Japan’s Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Kagoshima to ten, the airline said in its press release.

The new flights are also expected to contribute to building the strategic bilateral relationship between Vietnam and Japan while also promoting more cultural and economic exchanges between people in the two countries. 

Vietjet said it believes the new routes will help Vietnam reach its target of attracting one million Japanese tourists in 2020.

Vietnam welcomed over 950,000 Japanese tourists last year, a 15.2 percent increase from 2018.

Over 495,000 Vietnamese tourists flocked to Japan in 2018, a 27.3 percent increase year-on-year, according to figures given at Monday’s conference.

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