At the beginning of 2020 when this sector achieved impressive growth which seemed to open a new and exciting period, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out globally, causing all tourism activities to stop.
In the past two years, the pandemic has pushed the world tourism, including Vietnam’s into the abyss. The market has completely broken down, stalled, and indicators have fallen seriously, and the growth has declined to zero or even negative.
From the end of March 2020, Vietnam had to maintain social distancing to prevent the spread of the epidemic, so the number of visitors decreased by 80% compared to 2019, reaching only 3.7 million; the number of domestic tourists decreased by 34% over the same period in 2019, reaching 56 million arrivals; total revenue from tourists decreased by 59%, reaching only VND 312,200 billion.
Tourism targets in 2021 continue to decline more dramatically. The number of international arrivals reached only 14,900; the number of domestic tourists reached 40 million; total revenue from tourism was only VND 180 trillion. At that time, up to 90-95% of tourism businesses had to stop operating or cut most of their personnel. Most cultural, sports and tourism events had to be postponed for disease prevention.
In that context, many specific support policies have contributed to removing difficulties for tourism businesses and workers such as reducing the deposit for travel service business by 80% by the end of 2023, reducing the time deposit refund period for tour operators (from 60 days to 30 days), 50% reduction of appraisal fee for travel business license, etc.
Many localities have also issued policies to exempt and reduce entrance fees, reduce land rents, delay loan repayment, provide loans to pay workers or support domestic tourism.
Immediately after domestic and international tourism was fully reopened, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism chaired and accompanied localities and businesses to organize a series of culture, tourism, sports events to promote tourism activities.
Especially, on the occasion of the 31st SEA Games held in Vietnam, the tourism industry took advantage of the opportunity to strongly promote the image of safe, friendly and attractive Vietnam tourism to sports delegations and international tourists.
As a result, in the first 6 months of 2022, Vietnam's tourism welcomed 413 thousand international tourists; serving 60.8 million domestic tourists; total revenue from tourists was estimated at VND 265 trillion. Data from Google also shows that Vietnam is continuously among the top destinations in the world in terms of growth in tourism information search (up from 50% to 75%).
In particular, according to the latest report of the World Economic Forum, the development capacity index of Vietnam's tourism in 2021 ranked 52nd, up 8 places compared to 2019. This makes Vietnam become one of the 3 countries with the best improvement in tourism in the world.
Source: GSO
Compiled by VietnamCredit
