Vietnam’s international tourism is on the road to a steady recovery, attracting more than one million foreign visitors in July, the highest monthly total in the past three years, tourism authorities recently reported.

The country welcomed more than 1.03 million foreign travelers in July, posting month-on-month growth of 6.5 percent, according to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism (VNAT) under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

This is the first time in three years that Vietnam has received more than one million international visitors in a single month.

South Korea topped the list of countries sending visitors to Vietnam every month in January-July, with nearly 1.9 million Korean nationals having entered Vietnam since the start of 2023, equal to nearly one-third of the total number of international arrivals, the VNAT reported.

China and the U.S. ranked second and third with 738,000 and 445,000 visitors, respectively, to Vietnam.

The month’s results brought the total number of international visitors to Vietnam so far this year to nearly 6.6 million, accounting for 83 percent of the year’s goal.

The growth of foreign arrivals has contributed to boosting the country’s total tourism revenue for January-July to VND416.6 trillion (US$17.54 billion), the VNAT stated.

The agency believes that such positive results mean that the year’s target of eight million international travelers is well within the reach of the country’s tourism sector.    

The ongoing recovery of Vietnam’s international tourism has acted as a main driver of the country’s growth in trade and retail sales in January-July, HSBC commented in a recent report.

Notably, arrivals from mainland China to Vietnam over the period showed remarkable improvement, representing about 45 percent of the figure recorded in the same time frame in 2019.

The rate of Chinese tourists returning to Vietnam is the highest among foreign travelers back to the Southeast Asian country after the pandemic, HSBC experts commented.

Notably, Vietnam has overtaken Thailand, a traditional ASEAN market for China’s outbound tourism, in terms of receiving Chinese travelers.  

Such good results have been attributed to the strong recovery of flight routes between Vietnam and China, with the number of flights between the two countries in January-July equal to 53 percent of that in 2019, just behind Singapore (75 percent) and Malaysia (57 percent), according to HSBC.

With a new visa-easing policy expected to be enforced from August 15, Vietnam's tourism outlook continues to brighten, tourist experts forecast.  

Asian travelers are seen as a driving force for the country’s tourism and hotel market to recover over the next year, they added.

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