Hanoi among seven best places in Asia for solo travelers

Hanoi is a popular city for many travellers across the world, according to Bigseventravel. (Source: https://bigseventravel.com)

Hanoi (VNA) – Hanoi has been ranked fifth among the seven best places in Asia for solo travellers by Bigseventravel.

The Italian tourism website described Hanoi as a hectic, crazy and often confusing city.

It said Hanoi is a popular city for many travellers across the world. 

“From street food markets to cultural museums and scenic freshwater lakes, Hanoi has something for all tastes.”

Hanoi is a wonderful base from which to explore the north of Vietnam, including the world natural heritage site of Ha Long Bay in the northeastern province of Quang Ninh and the popular resort town of Sa Pa in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai, the website said. 

Visitors can also enjoy the comforts of a modern vibrant city, it added.

Tokyo (Japan) topped the list, followed by Bali (Indonesia), Singapore, and Seoul (the Republic of Korea). 

Siem Reap (Cambodia) and Chiang Mai (Thailand) came sixth and seventh.

Hanoi welcomed more than 4.7 million foreign tourists in the first nine months of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 10.1 percent, according to the municipal Department of Tourism.

It has been selected to compete for the title of World’s Leading City Destination at the 2019 World Travel Awards (WTA). The deadline for voting is October 20 at the WTA’s website http://www.worldtravelawards.com/vote.

This year, Hanoi was again listed in various tourism rankings. Japan’s All Nippon Airways included the city among the 26 best Asian cities for a combination of business and leisure. The capital city was ranked fourth among the 25 destinations in Asia and 15th among the 25 destinations in the world in 2019 by TripAdvisor. Most recently, it was named in the Cable News Network (CNN)'s list of the 17 best places in Asia.

In the list of the top 100 city destinations 2018 released by Euromonitor International, Hanoi ranked fourth among capital cities in Southeast Asia in terms of foreign tourist numbers, following Bangkok (23.69 million), Singapore (18.55 million) and Kuala Lumpur (13.43 million).

Statistics from the Hanoi Department of Tourism, in 2018, the capital city welcomed nearly 304,000 Japanese tourists, a surge of 105 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, more than 4.7 million foreign tourists chose Hanoi as their destination in the first nine months of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 10.1 percent.

The capital city hosted a total 21.5 million visitors in the period, up 9.5 percent against the same period last year and equivalent to 74.46 percent of this year’s plan. There were more than 16.8 million domestic holidaymakers, up 9.3 percent year-on-year.

Local tourism revenue reached 74.7 trillion VND (3.2 billion USD) in the nine months, up 30.9 percent and nearing 72 percent of the yearly plan.

The city is striving for 29 million tourists and 103 trillion VND in tourism revenue in 2019.

To bolster tourism, Hanoi considers improving the quality of destinations and developing infrastructure and tourism products as important tasks.

The capital plans to attract investment to build shopping centres and accelerate major projects like the Kim Quy culture, tourism and entertainment park in Dong Anh district, the horse racing and entertainment complex in Soc Son district, and the Hanoi Museum. It will boost preservation projects at the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, Bat Trang pottery village and Van Phuc silk village.

Efforts are also being made to develop 20 – 30 high-quality tourist sites across the city.

Additionally, the values of local cultural heritages and traditional villages will be brought into play to turn them into attractive places of interest./.