The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) expects that the “Vietnam -Your Destination” programme will help it fulfil the yearly targets of 4.2 million foreign arrivals and 28 million domestic holidaymakers.

The Head of the Travel Department under the VNAT, Vu The Binh, said the campaign will focus on overseas Vietnamese and encourage them to promote Vietnam’s image.

So far, about 80 percent of foreign arrivals say they have travel led to Vietnam based on recommendations from friends who had visited, Binh said, explaining the VNAT’s policy.

The “Vietnam’s Impression” campaign launched by the VNAT last year considerably contributed to increasing the hospitality industry’s revenues by 9 percent year-on-year to some VND70 trillion.

The VNAT reported that foreign arrivals in Vietnam surged by 27.4 percent to almost 880,000 in the past two months.

China took the lead with some 137,000, up 90.8 percent. Other major markets such as the Republic of Korea and Japan also showed signs of a rally with the number of arrivals up by 24.4 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.