Da Nang City will enhance its tourism cooperation with Japan as the latter seeks to increase the number of tourists from central Vietnam and vice versa, Da Nang and Japanese officials said at a seminar on Thursday.

The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) in Vietnam and the Da Nang Department of External Relations jointly held a tourism seminar as part of the Vietnam-Japan Festival 2023 – an event held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the two countries’ diplomatic relations.

At the seminar, Yakabe Yoshinori, Consul General of Japan in Da Nang, said the number of Vietnamese travelers visiting Japan is on the rise.

The consulate general has fostered the issuance of visas to citizens from central Vietnam coming to Japan for stays and official duties since the resumption of direct air routes between the two locations in March this year.

The agency will also begin granting short-term tourist visas in the near future.

Uchida Shusuke, a representative of JNTO in Vietnam, affirmed that the enhancement of tourism cooperation is a way to develop the partnership between the two countries and an opportunity for their peoples to better understand each other.

The organization is trying to encourage Vietnamese tourists to travel to Japan through tourism-focused promotional campaigns.

JNTO and Vietnam Airlines on Wednesday inked a memorandum of understanding on promoting tourism cooperation between Vietnam and Japan.

It set a target of 500,000 Vietnamese visitors to Japan, equal to the figure recorded in 2019.

Nguyen Xuan Binh, deputy director of the Da Nang Department of Tourism, said Da Nang considers Japan a key tourism source market, adding that the city welcomed more than 183,000 Japanese tourist arrivals in 2019, surging nearly 200 percent over 2015.

Preferential policies after the COVID-19 pandemic have paved the way for an increase in the number of tourists visiting each destination.

Since Vietnam reopened its doors to international tourists in March last year, the city has welcomed some 27,000 Japanese visitors, according to news site Vietnamplus.

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