In this post, I will do a quick comparison in terms of inbound travel between Vietnam and other Asian neighboring countries. Data is from United Nations World Tourism Organization. To simplify the calculations, I used a static exchange rate of 23,100 VND/USD.
I was a bit skeptical about my country’s appeal to international guests, but as it turned out, Vietnam does pull in more than 15 million international visitors in 2018, a quite respectable.
However, we slip backwards on the receipt scoreboard, behind countries that have fewer visitors.
As a consequence, among the 12 countries surveyed, we pull the third smallest receipt per arrival.
It’s quite disappointing to see the receipt figures. Vietnam has a lot to offer. We have an amazing cuisine that was revered by the late great Anthony Bourdain. We have beaches throughout the country and untouched mountainous areas, including some famous sites.
We should develop our service offerings even more to increase the receipts. We already manage to pull in a lot of visitors. Now, it is a matter of making those visitors come back and/or spend more money while in Vietnam.
Minh Quang Duong 