Accepting the invitation of Minister of Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism; Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Ngoc Thien had attended the 9th APEC Tourism Ministerial Meeting, from May 28 to 29 in Lima, Peru with the topic “Cooperation in Asia – Pacific region through favorable traffic conditions”.
APEC tourism had accepted 350 million arrivals of foreign visitors with the income of 480 billion US dollars and created 47 million direct working opportunities. All the ministers had considered and given opinions toward the results of implementing “APEC tourism development strategy in terms of 2015 – 2019”, other accomplished projects and programs as well as processing projects and programs under the cooperation framework of APEC tourism.
In the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Thien had announced the results of Vietnamese tourism activities in last period, as well as updated new undertakings and policies of the Party and Government in order to boost tourism working field including investment, improving tourism infrastructure, developing human resources for tourism, creating favorable traffic conditions for tourists, exempting unilateral visa for citizens from UK, France, German, Spain and Italy, raising the total number of countries received Vietnamese visa exemption for citizens with common passports to 22 nations.
The content of Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Thien’s speech had received major consensus and high appreciation of Minister in charge of tourism from APEC member economies, other international organizations specialized in tourism such as The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Ministered had discussed specific content, with the emphasize in boosting APEC tourism cooperation including increasing airline connection between APEC member economies, creating traffic favorable conditions for tourist so that they can enjoy best experience when visiting APEC tourist destinations, enhacing skills and professional knowledge and the abilities of APEC tourism’s human resources, supporting the operation and development of small and medium sized enterprises (SME) working in tourism field, increasing the operation between regions. The government with private sector and researchers are increasing cooperation between APEC tourism working group with other working groups and other cooperation systems of APEC such as traffic, information – media, anti-terrorism, ensuring security, safety, technology science, customs, etc.
Before ending the meeting, all ministers had discussed and agreed to General Lima announcement about “Connecting Asia-Pacific region through creating favorable traffic conditions”, in which continuing highlighting the importance role and contribution of tourism sector to region’s development, and expressing the commitment and determination to achieve the goal of welcoming 800 million international visitors in 2025 as stated in the 8th APEC Tourism Ministerial Meeting hold in Macau, China in 2014 and requesting specific activities to achieve this goal.