(TITC) - On 24 July 2024, in Ha Noi, Mr. Nguyen Trung Khanh - Chairman of Vietnam National Authority of Tourism (VNAT) had a meeting session with Mr. Jaime Francisco Rodríguez - Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to Vietnam.
At the meeting, Ambassador Jaime Francisco Rodríguez said that the tourism industry in Dominicana is very developed, a favorite destination for North American, European and especially American tourists. In 2023, Dominicana welcomed 10 million visitor arrivals. Dominicana has advantages in landscape tourism, golf and entertainment tourism, leisure and eco-tourism, and adventure sports tourism. In 2024, the country's tourism industry aims to receive 12-13 million international visitor arrivals.
The Ambassador shared that he had the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and was very impressed with the services provided by travel agencies and hotels. He found that Vietnam has a variety of tourism types, Vietnamese people are friendly.
VNAT’s Chairman Nguyen Trung Khanh congratulated Dominicana's achievements in economic development, including tourism, ranked 7th in the Americas region, and the 1st in the Caribbean.
The Chairman noted that tourism is a key economic sector of Vietnam, focusing main product lines: sea and island tourism, cultural tourism, eco-tourism and city tourism. In 2019, Vietnam welcomed 18 million international visitor arrivals, ranking 4th in ASEAN. Vietnam also received many prestigious recognitions and awards from world tourism.
Vietnam has officially reopened tourism from 15 March 2022 with favorable immigration policies as well as restoring almost all international and domestic flight routes. Therefore, Vietnamese tourism has recovered quickly. In 2024, Vietnam aims to welcome 17-18 million international visitor arrivals. After the first 6 months of the year, there were over 8.8 million international visitor arrivals, in which numbers of arrivals from many source markets exceeded of levels in 2019.
Vietnam has issued a new policy to create more favorable conditions for international tourists to Vietnam from 15 August 2023. Accordingly, deploying e-visas for citizens of all countries and territories with an increased duration of 90 days and valid for single entryor multipleentries; The stay duration for citizens of 13 countries extended to 45 days.
Two countries signed a Letter of Intent on tourism cooperation in 2008 and now it has expired. Due to the geographical distance, no direct flights, no tourism promotion activities or business connections, the people of the two countries have not been informed about each other's tourism potential, so the exchange of visitors between the two countries is limited.
Therefore, the Chairman hopes that the Ambassador will be a bridge for tourism information and tourism businesses connecting; help inform Vietnam's new visa policy for Dominican people and businesses. Based on the increase in tourist numbers, the two countries would consider signing documents to promote deeper tourism cooperation.
Highly agreeing with the opinion of Chairman Nguyen Trung Khanh, Ambassador Jaime Francisco Rodríguez looks forward to welcoming the Vietnamese delegation to visit Dominicana and could signing a Memorandum of Understand on tourism cooperation.
Tourism Information Technology Center