On March 3rd, VNAT’s Vice Chairman Nguyen Le Phuc attended 2nd Viet Nam – Saint Petersburg Tourism Online Forum. More than 60 tourism businesses registered for online participation.
Speaking at the forum, Vice Chairman Nguyen Le Phuc emphasized that Saint Petersburg City and Russian Federation are famous destinations with majestic natural scenery and long history.
The warm relationship of Viet Nam and Russia has been developing for long time, in which tourism cooperation has achieved many fruitful results. In Europe, Russian is the largest source of visitors to Viet Nam. According to General Office of Statistics of Viet Nam, in 2019, there were about 646.524 Russian visitor arrivals to Viet Nam, an increase of 6,6% compared to 2018.
In the past few years, Vietnam tourism industry organized many tourism roadshows in major Russian cities; organized Vietnamese Cultural Day in Saint Petersburg City; participated in international travel fairs such as Intourmarket Fair, Otdykh Leisure International Travel Fair, MITT International Travel Fair in Moscow… Besides, Vietnam tourism also regularly invited Russian media agencies and tourism businesses to survey Vietnam’s tourism products.
On May 22, 2019, Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Federal Agency for Tourism (Rosturizm) of Russia signed Memorandum of Understanding on Tourism Cooperation for the 2019-2024 period in order to promote Vietnamese tourists to Russia, especially Saint Petersburg City, as well as Russian tourists to Viet Nam.
Vice Chairman Nguyen Le Phuc expressed his belief that Viet Nam – Saint Petersburg Tourism Forum would strengthen cooperation and contribute to speeding up the recovery of the tourism industry of the two sides in the context of Covid-19 pandemic.
The representative of Rosturizm said that Viet Nam is a popular and attractive destination for Russian tourists because of its unique cultural tradition, diverse cuisine and tourism products.
Viet Nam’s transportation system is developing; direct flights between the two countries have been opened. In particular, Viet Nam has been included in the list of countries receiving electronic visas to Russia, helping to simplify procedures, creating favorable conditions to attract Vietnamese tourists to Russia.
At the forum, tourism enterprises of Viet Nam and the Russian Federation exchanged and introduced the tourism products of the two countries, and discussed their plans to promote tourism cooperation right after reopened international travel.
In October 2019, the first Viet Nam – Saint Petersburg Tourism Forum was held in Saint Petersburg City, Russia.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
