Ottawa (VNA) – Vietnam and Canada enjoy a large room for their tourism and travel companies to cooperate, with the 250,000-strong Vietnamese community living, working and studying in Canada serving as a bridge linking the two countries, watchers have said.

During the ongoing Montreal International Tourism and Travel Show which started on October 19, they further said that tourism development creates an important chance helping connect the enterprises now that Vietnam is Canada’s largest trade partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Watchers also held that Vietnam is a dynamic and modern country with many attractions, having experienced changes but still kept its traditionality. They affirmed that coming to Vietnam, visitors will feel amused and surprised with the beauty of the land and people here.

This is the second time the Vietnamese Embassy has taken part in the Montreal International Tourism and Travel Show which attracted over 400 entities from about 100 countries all over the world. Publications distributed from Vietnam’s pavilion at the show brief visitors of the beauty of the country as well as its tourism potential and strength. The participation is described as helping improve Canadian visitors’ knowledge on Vietnam’s culture and open up many chances for the bilateral people-to-people exchanges.

A representative of the Hanh Travel company said many Canadian people want to visit Vietnam, and rated the country as the most excellent in Southeast Asia.

Tourism has been taken as one of the key economic sectors of Vietnam, and developing tourism is a strategic orientation. In the first eight months of this year, over 10.4 million foreigners visited Vietnam, an increase of 22.8 percent over the same period last year. However, the figure of tourists from Canada is still modest, only 104,057 in the first eight months of this year and 138,242 for the whole of last year.-VNA
VNA