Vietnamese travel firms are hurrying to draw up the plans to promote tourism for 2011 and 2012. A lot of tourism promotion campaigns will be launched by travel firms to attract more foreign tourists to Vietnam. Especially the firms will focus on nearby markets.

According to the Institute for Tourism Development Research ITDR, defining the key markets and the exact forecasts about the development potentials will help policy makers to draw up reasonable tourism development strategies. Meanwhile, reasonable strategies will allow to develop loyal markets and find new markets, thus helping attracting more and more tourists to Vietnam.

The countries and territories in Northern Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea), in Eastern Europe (France, the UK and Germany) and in other continents such as the US, Australia have been the most important markets for Vietnam. Meanwhile, the last 2-3 years have witnessed the rapid increases of the numbers of tourists from ASEAN countries, including Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), besides the nearby markets, existing markets have been growing steadily. These remain the most important markets for Vietnam’s tourism. The images of Vietnam have become familiar to the travelers from the countries; while Vietnamese travel firms have got experiences in serving the travelers.

However, VNAT said that the rapid growth rates of new markets in the region have shown new great potentials for Vietnam’s tourism. Providing good tourism products to expand the existing markets and satisfying the demand of newly emerging markets are the two goals for Vietnam’s tourism.

According to ITDR, in 2004, South Korea was considered a new market for Vietnam. However, South Korean quickly became the second biggest market in the top 10 key markets in 2006-2008.

Most recently, Japan has become a key market with 300,000 Japanese travelers arriving to Vietnam every year. In fact, the number of Japanese tourists to Vietnam once decreased sharply by 40 percent due to the earthquake. However, a strong recovery has been reported in the market.

Vietravel said that the travel firm received three groups of 700 Japanese travelers in early July, the biggest groups of travelers who come to Vietnam after the catastrophe in March.

Vietravel believes that Japan is the most important market for Vietnam’s tourism with the number of tourists to Vietnam to increase by 15-20 percent over 2010. Bui Nguyen Tam Dang, a senior executive of Vietravel said that despite the severe damages, Japan still has great potentials and it can recover soon. Experts say the market will fully recover from the third quarter of 2011.

With the visa waving policy for international tourists to Vietnam, experts have predicted the rise of the two regional countries - Thailand and Cambodia. Besides, Malaysia and Singapore also prove to be the potential markets

The old markets in Northern Asia always bring the highest proportions of tourists to Vietnam. The number of Chinese tourists goes up and down regularly, but China has been leading the markets.

In North America, Vietnam expects to receive many travelers from the US. Most of them are war veterans who want to return to the old battle, and Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) who want to return to the homeland.