Foreign tourists soar by 80 per cent in October

November 01, 2011 | 13:22

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Foreign visitor numbers surged by 80.9 per cent in October compared with the previous month, totalling 518,477, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism said.

illustration photo

The figure increased by 17.8 per cent compared with October last year.

Of those, about 445,612 international visitors arrived by plane, accounting for 85.9 per cent of the total visitors; 1,500 by sea, 0.3 per cent; 71,365 by road, 13.8 per cent.

The number of foreign visitors to Vietnam by plane increased by 24.6 per cent in comparison with the same period last year while the number of international visitors arriving by sea and road decreased 66.7 per cent and 8.5 per cent respectively.

About 314,000 international tourists came to Vietnam for a holiday, a rise of 21.1 per cent compared with October last year. About 86,305 visitors arrived for business purposes, a decline of 0.1 per cent.

In the first 10 months of the year, of a total 4.83 million international tourists to Vietnam , 2.9 million visitors came for tourism purposes.

During the same period, the country saw the highest increase from Cambodia , 56.9 per cent, followed by China , 45.8 per cent, Malaysia , 11.7 per cent and Japan 8.5 per cent.

The number of foreign visitors from the Republic of Korea , Taiwan , France , Australia , the US was also on the rise. Only the number of visitors from Thailand declined (20.7 per cent) in comparison with the same period past year.

VIR/VNA

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