Vietnamese travel firms seek to woo more European visitors
Vietnamese travel firms seek to woo more European visitors
Multiple Vietnamese travel businesses have introduced their products and services at the World Travel Market (WTM) held in London from Monday to Wednesday this week to attract more international tourists, especially those in Europe.
Visitors gather at a booth jointly run by Saigontourist Group and Vietnam Airlines at the World Travel Market (WTM) held in London from November 6 to 8, 2023. Photo: T.L. / Tuoi Tre |
Saigontourist Group and Vietnam Airlines are among the Vietnamese firms to take part in this travel trade event, which is taking place at the international exhibition and convention center ExCeL London.
Saigontourist and Vietnam Airlines held a ‘Happy Hour’ event and a lucky draw at their mutual booth on Tuesday afternoon (local time) at the WTM London, where their partners and visitors were served with drinks and snacks, played games, and received many gifts from the two Vietnamese exhibitors.
Pham Huy Binh, board chairman at Saigontourist Group, said the company joined the travel trade show to promote its tourism services and facilitate the rebound in international tourism post-pandemic, especially the markets in Europe, the UK, and neighboring nations.
Saigontourist Group and its subsidiaries launched a host of programs to promote Vietnamese tourism to high-quality markets in Europe and other key international markets.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Saigontourist Travel Service Company, a subsidiary of Saigontourist Group, annually served around 111,000 European visitors to Vietnam by air and sea. The number of British tourists accounted for over 58,000, equivalent to 52 percent of the total.
Last year, roughly 35,000 European visitors, including over 1,000 from the UK, booked Saigontourist tours and services to visit Vietnam, while tens of thousands of Vietnamese tourists visited European destinations.
Hotels, resorts, golf courses, and convention centers under Saigontourist Group in Ho Chi Minh City and other Vietnamese localities annually service over 500,000 visitors from Europe and the UK, generating revenues of tens of thousands of billions of dong. (VND1 billion = US$40,583).
Official data showed that Vietnam’s top ten tourist markets in the first few months of this year excluded the European market, but Europeans remain high-spending international tourists and love Vietnam’s local culture.
During the rest of the year, Vietnam is set to welcome three million international visitors to fulfill its target of serving more than 12 million tourist arrivals in 2023.
