RoK plans to lure more Vietnamese tourists to destinations

Most notably, Gangwon province captured a great deal of attention from visitors at the event with a huge tourism space introducing the locality’s tourism development potential, including local cultural identities as well as new tourism products to attract Vietnamese visitors.

Choi Sung Hyun, director of Gangwon Tourism Organization, revealed that Vietnamese people are very keen on Korean culture, especially K-pop and Korean dramas, and that the number of Vietnamese visitors to the RoK ranked fifth among the total number of tourists visiting last year.

He went on to unveil that Gangwon aims to raise the number of Vietnamese travelers heading to the RoK by 10fold in comparison to last year’s figure of 76,000 people.

For his part, Wu Yong, director of Woori Global Tour Company, said that Korean tourism businesses have recently shown a keen interest in the Vietnamese market which boasts several advantages as it strives to become an industrial hub, thereby emerging as the RoK’s best cooperation partner in Southeast Asia.

Vietnam shares a lot of similarities with the RoK in terms of culture, natural resources, population, and economic growth, while many major corporations in the world are starting to shift their operations to the market, he added.

According to the KTO Office in Vietnam, as many as 420,000 Vietnamese people visited the RoK last year, making it the Southeast Asian country with the highest number of visitors heading to the RoK.

In contrast, the RoK was also Vietnam's largest source of international visitors last year with nearly 3.6 million visitors.

At present, the KTO has been promoting the introduction of the scheme “Top 100 Korean tourist destinations” in the Vietnamese market, of which Gangwon boasts 10 tourist attractions, including Nami Island, Mureung Valley, Samaksan Lake cable car, Gangneung Coffee Road, and Sangeum Mountain Suspension Bridge.