Laos greets over 1 million foreign tourists in four months
Vientiane (VNA) – Laos welcomed over 1 million foreign tourists in the first four
months of this year, according to the Tourism Development Department of Lao
Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism.
Visitors
from Thailand topped the list with 431,000, followed by Vietnam (224,00), China
(223,000) and the Republic of Korea (57,000).
The
Southeast Asian country also accommodated more than 78,000 travellers from Europe and nearly
23,000 tourists from the US.
The Lao
government has always considered tourism as one of the country's key economic
sectors and has given priority to the development of the smokeless industry. It
also identified tourism as one of the industries that need to be prioritised not
only to help revive the economy but also to create more jobs and income for local
residents in the post-COVID-19 pandemic.
The welcoming
of over 1 million visitors in the first four months of this year reflects that the
Lao tourism industry is recovering quickly and that the Government can fulfil the goal of attracting 1.4 million international tourists, which was announced
earlier this year./.