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Tourism sector loses US$23 bln to COVID-19

VGP – Viet Nam's tourism industry lost US$23 billion in revenue to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Ngoc Thien at the National Assembly’s questions-answers session on November 10.

November 11, 2020 1:05 PM GMT+7

Illustration photo

In 2019, foreign arrivals rose to a record high of 18 million while the number of domestic tourists reached 800 million, 1.3 times higher than in 2015, bringing the sector's revenue to US$36 billion, accounting for 9.2% of the GDP. 

Viet Nam is named one of ten top Asia-Pacific tourist destinations and fourth in Southeast Asia after Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, according to the Pacific Asia Tourism Association (PATA).

The PATA stressed that Viet Nam’s tourism growth in 2019 experienced a year-on-year surge of 7.5 percent, ranking 12nd in the Asia-Pacific region.

PATA forecasted that Viet Nam is likely to lead the Asia-Pacific region in attracting international visitors from 2019-2023.

However, due to negative impacts of COVID-19, Viet Nam only welcomed more than 3.8 million foreign arrivals over the recent 10 months of 2020, a year-on-year plunge of 80% while the number of domestic visitors also dropped by 50% against the same period last year, said Thien. 

A series of tourism promotion programs have been rolled out in a bid to recover the tourism industry in the post-pandemic time, including launching the domestic tourism stimulation programs in the remaining months of 2020 with the top priorities given to safety and attraction, and operating an app on safe travel in the country. The effort aims to facilitate the new tourism campaign in the rest months of the year and provide information on safe destinations for tourists.

By Thuy Dung