The signing ceremony marked an important milestone in the process of fostering tourism cooperation between the two countries, thereby fuelling cooperation in other fields such as economics, politics and society.
Speaking at the event, CEO of Korea Tourism Organisation Kim Jangsil said the two countries saw growth in tourism cooperation in the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 500,000 Vietnamese tourists visited the RoK and about 4.29 million RoK tourists visited Vietnam in 2019.
According to Director of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism Nguyen Trung Khanh, Vietnam and the RoK are two important tourism markets of each other. Before the pandemic, the RoK was Vietnam’s second largest tourist market and held the lead in terms of visitor growth. The exchange of visitors between Vietnam and the RoK reached 1.8 million in 2016 and the number increased to 4.8 million in 2019.
The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding is an appropriate and timely decision, with commitments to focus on promoting information exchange on tourism development, digital transformation and the connection of a smart tourist card system, Khanh noted.
On the same day, the Korea Tourism Organisation held the Korea Travel Mart and Korea Night 2022 to meet with Vietnamese and RoK tourism businesses and honour Vietnamese travel agencies with outstanding tourism achievements in 2022.
