
The event, held by the three localities and the Malaysia – Vietnam FriendshipAssociation, aims at luring more visitors from Malaysia – a key tourism market inthe Southeast Asian region.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Deputy Director of Da Nang city’s Departmentof Tourism Nguyen Xuan Binh highlighted that Vietnam and Malaysia are celebrating their 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2013, which issignificant for both sides to develop the relations in the future, includingtourism.
In this context, the programme is expected to help the localities expandinternational tourism market, while popularising Vietnam’s heritage sites' tourism brand.
Charge d’affaires of the Vietnamese Embassyin Malaysia Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh stressed that tourism collaboration between thetwo sides has been developed on the basis of the Government-level TourismCooperation Agreement in 1994, with the opening of the Malaysian tourismpromotion office in Vietnam and an array of promotion activities inboth nations.
Malaysia is on the list of top 10 source markets for tourism in Vietnam, shesaid, adding the two nations boast huge potential for cooperation in the field.
Meanwhile, President of the Malaysian Association of Tourism and Travel Agents(MATTA) Nigel Wong Chun Teim stressed thetourism industry’s future has an important role to play for Vietnam, Malaysiaand ASEAN as a whole, and affirmed MATTA’s commitment to continuing policysupport in tourism cooperation with ASEAN and Vietnam in particular.
He expressed his hope that tourism cooperation between the two countries aswell as within ASEAN will make a strong recovery in the future.
Within the framework of the event, the tourism promotion centres of ThuaThien-Hue, Da Nang and Quang Nam and the Malaysia – Vietnam FriendshipAssociation signed a Memorandum of Understanding on communications cooperationto help Vietnam’s tourism products better penetrate into the Malaysian market./.