On December 30th, the Hanoi municipal Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism organised a ceremony to receive the 3 millionth foreign visitor in 2014. The lucky traveler is Ms. Papazoglou Elenci from Greece.

Over the past few years, the Hanoi’s tourism sector affirmed its position as a favorite spot of domestic and foreign tourists. Foreign visitor arrivals to the city increased year on year. In 2011, Hanoi greeted more than 1.88 million foreigners while the figures for 2012 and 2013 were 2.1 million and 2.58 million, respectively.

Ms. Papazoglou Elenci from Greece (middle) is the 3 millionth tourist of Hanoi in 2014. (Photo: CPV)

In 2014, Hanoi won prestigious titles on the leading magazines such as TripAdvisor and Smart Travel Asia. Trip Advisor, the US’s premier travel website, ranked Hanoi among the top tourist destinations in Asia in this year, making it one of the world’s ten emerging areas for tourism. The capital city was named in the top six most attractive destinations in Asia by online tourism magazine Smart Travel Asia.

Aiming to lure more tourists, Hanoi will focus its promotion and advertising on markets of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Russia, Poland, Czech and Hungary.

On this occasion, the Hanoi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism presented Hanoi Tourism 2014 Award to six tourism enterprises who had significant contribution to tourism development in the city.

On the same day, Hue Relics Preservation Centre welcomed its 30 millionth visitor during the end of the year Golden Tourism Week celebrations at the Hue Heritage Site.

The incidental holidaymaker, Dang Dinh Nguyen from Dong Nai province was offered with a special gift worth VND30 million and two free tickets to visit Hue relics in 2015.

Chiganova Elena, a Russian tourist, became the 2 millionth visitor arriving at the Cam Ranh International Airport in the central coastal province of Khanh Hoa this year on December 30th./.

( Hoang Quan )