Many booked tours to northern provinces for the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday have been postponed or changed amid the resurgence of COVID-19 infections in the area two weeks before the holiday, travel firms have said.
It’s fair to say that 2020 was a challenging year for Vietnam’s tourism sector, but it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster. Analysts have said that COVID-19 created a turning point for both local and international tourism, requiring travel companies study and craft a new future for their business.
MICE, a type of tourism combining meetings, incentives, conferences and events, is evaluated as a solution to revitalise the domestic tourism market in 2021 after the whole industry was hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020.
Vietnam welcomed 17,736 foreign visitors in January, a month-on-month increase of 9 percent but down 99.1 percent year-on-year, the General Statistics Office announced on January 29.
Ninh Binh, a tourist destination in Vietnam’s northern region and host of the National Tourism Year 2021, has released its plans for the annual programme, which feature myriad tourism, cultural, and sporting events.
The northern province of Lao Cai, home to the popular holiday town of Sa Pa, has set a target of welcoming 5 million visitors this year and earning more than 16 trillion VND (696.17 million USD) in tourism revenue.
Da Nang on January 22 welcomed a group of more than 700 visitors taking a Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) tour, one of the largest groups on such a tour to the central city this year.
Tour business Vietravel is providing a bundle of promotional spring tours and airfares for visitors at the second iteration of the Tet (Lunar New Year) Festival 2021, which takes place from January 21-24 at Le Van Tam Park, Ho Chi Minh City.
Given Vietnam’s successful control of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts in tourism and hospitality have predicted a positive outlook for Vietnam’s tourism post-COVID crisis.
The Hanoi Department of Tourism has decided to concentrate resources on promoting the domestic tourism market this year and will prepare to welcome international arrivals when conditions allow.
Google Arts & Culture on January 21 announced the Wonders of Vietnam project on online platform to honour the country’s natural landscapes, tangible and intangible heritages recognised by the UNESCO.
France's news agency AFP on January 20 published an article on how tourism has been developed in and benefited local community around Vietnam’s Son Doong, which has been dubbed the world’s largest cave.
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