Vietnamese tourism growing faster than Thai and Japanese tourism: Agoda CEO

According to the media publication, Omri Morgenshtern, CEO of Agoda, points out that Thailand could maintain its edge by removing visa issues, opening more flight routes, and creating business reasons to promote travel.

The article outlines that Vietnam has grown its share of inbound travel over the first five months of the year, coming in third behind Japan and Thailand among Asian destinations. It duly jumped from fifth place in 2019, the last year of pre-pandemic travel.

Thailand topped Agoda's list in 2022, but was quickly overtaken by Japan, which reopened its borders in October.

Thailand has welcomed over 11 million visitors this year, already surpassing figures from 2022. With inbound, outbound, and domestic travel already recovered, Thailand's task is to sustainably grow its tourism industry, which in 2019 accounted for roughly a fifth of gross domestic product.

Morgenshtern told reporters on June 19 that while the Republic of Korea has sent the biggest group of inbound travelers to Thailand, more Koreans are traveling to Japan and Vietnam. He attributed this to a significant number of Korean factories opening in Vietnam over the past two decades, a factor which has seen the establishment of a community of expatriates who spread word about Vietnam back home.

"The more you can bring in investment, business and people... you can also drive tourism over time," said Morgenshtern.

According to figures from the General Statistics Office, Vietnam welcomed nearly 4.6 million international tourists during the first five months of the year, representing a 12-fold increase compared to the same period last year and fulling 57.5% of the annual plan.