Korean visitors stroll at Ho Chi Minh City Book Street. Photo: VNA

Vietnam is the most popular destination among Korean tourists this summer, VNA cited Hana Tour, the largest travel company in the Republic of Korea (RoK).

The company recently announced the results of its analysis on the booking situation for overseas travel departing in July and August, which also indicated that international travel is gradually returning to normal after a long period of stagnation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the data released by Hana Tour on June 12, the percentage of its customers choosing Vietnam as their preferred vacation spot is the highest at 19.9%. Coming next is Japan with 18.2%, Europe 17.6%, China 13.3%, and Thailand 6.4%.

The peak period for summer vacations for Korean travellers will fall within the last two weeks of July and the beginning of August, specifically from July 24-August 6, when students in the RoK start their summer break. Hence, the demand for international travel also enters its peak phase.

Last year, the booking rate for tours to Vietnam by Hana Tour accounted for 26.2%. This means that for every four Koreans who wished to travel abroad in July and August, one person chose Vietnam. Following Vietnam were Guam 10.9%, Western Europe 9%, the Philippines 8.9%, and Japan 8%.

In April alone, the country welcomed 984,000 international travellers, the highest figure from the beginning of this year and an increase of 9.9% from the previous month. It served 10.5 million domestic tourists in the month.

The RoK remains Vietnam's biggest tourism market in the first four months with 1 million visitors, followed by the US with 263,000 and China with 252,000.

Meanwhile, the Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) of the RoK is stepping up a wide range of tourism promotion events in the latter half of 2023 to attract more Vietnamese visitors to the Northeast Asian country.

KTO Vietnam said as 2023 marks the start of the Visit Korea Year 2023 - 2024 with the motto of “Ride the Korean Wave”, it has organised a number of tourism promotion programmes.

Vietnam is an important market of the RoK’s tourism, so KTO has always paid attention to holding promotion activities in Vietnam, KTO Representative in Vietnam Lee Jae-hoon said, expressing his hope that Vietnamese people will love to travel in the RoK and enjoy new activities of KTO in the time ahead.

As of early June, the RoK welcomed 163,000 tourist arrivals from Vietnam, equivalent to 73% of that in the same period of 2019, before the pandemic broke out. It looks to attract nearly 400,000 Vietnamese visitors this year, or 70% of the pre-pandemic level, according to KTO Vietnam.

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