Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui

Hanoi - The number of foreigners visiting Vietnam increased nearly 20 per cent from the same period last year as the global tourism industry saw a recovery, authorities said Tuesday.

Vietnam attracts millions of tourists each year to sample its cuisine, but the number of locally qualified chefs is insufficient to meet demand.

The number of international tourist arrivals in September dropped by half compared to August and fell by 25.35 percent compared to last September, the national tourism authority said.

The tourism sector welcomed over 3.96 million foreign visitors in the January-August period, rising by 18.4 percent year-on-year, but the growth rate is lower than that of 35.2 percent in the same period last year.

Vietnam has welcomed almost 4 million foreign visitors since the beginning of this year, a year-on-year rise of 18.3 percent, and earned nearly 85 trillion VND in revenue from tourism.

Hanoi - The number of foreigners visiting Vietnam increased in the first half of 2011 by more than 18 per cent from the same period last year as the global tourism industry saw a recovery, authorities said Wednesday.

Nearly 3 million foreign tourist arrivals visited Vietnam in the first six months of 2011, a year-on-year increase of 18.1 percent, reported the Vietnam General Statistics Office.

A group of French travellers had a lucky escape in Vietnam when their tour boat sank on Halong Bay, the party's leader said on Monday, in an eerie echo of an accident earlier this year that killed 12.

Authorities have officially revoked a license for a mammoth $11.4 billion tourism project invested by US-based Galileo Investment Group Inc in the central Vietnamese province of Phu Yen, a top official confirmed.

A Vietnamese tour boat carrying 20 foreigners sank in Halong Bay, one of the country’s most popular destinations, at 5 a.m. local time, resulting in 12 deaths, Ngo Van Hung, head of Halong Bay’s management department, said today.

Vietnam's tourism industry has singled out China, the Northeast Asian countries of Japan and South Korea, Europe, and Asean as its four main source markets for next year's business plan and will boost marketing activities there, an official said.

But if you want to see the coastline and spend time with Vietnamese travelers, it is a favorite mode of transportation for them.

Tourism to Vietnam was up sharply in January as the industry recovers from a severe downturn in 2009, an official at the General Statistical Office said Friday.

There will be more international tourists visiting Vietnam in 2010, Nguyen Van Tuan, head of general Tourism Department spoke at the conference "Draft strategy of Vietnam tourism development till 2020 and vision to 2030" in Hanoi last Friday.

Slowing international visitor numbers have prompted Vietnam's tourism body to reduce its 2009 arrivals target from 4.5 million to 4 million.