HCM City (VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City plans to further strengthen connections with foreign tourism markets through Vietnam’s diplomatic network.

In the first six months of this year, the city served 2.68 million visitors, up 38% year on year, fulfilling 44.6% of the city’s target for the whole year, with a tourism revenue of 92.6 trillion VND (3.63 billion USD), a year-on-year rise of 14.6%.

The results were attributed to the city’s efforts in organising various large-scale tourism activities and strengthening linkage with foreign tourism markets.

In late June, the municipal Department of Tourism had a working session with Chen Mei-hsiu, Director of the Tourism and Travel Bureau of Taichung city of Taiwan (China) to discuss plans to promote tourism cooperation between Vietnam in general and HCM City in particular with Taichung.

In the Jan-May period, Vietnam welcomed 530,000 tourists from Taiwan, of whom about 193,000 visited HCM City, making Taiwan the fifth largest international market of the city.

Also in June, the department also worked with Armenian Ambassador to Vietnam Suren Baghdasaryan. Vietnam and Armenia are each other’s new tourism market and people of the two sides have still lacked information about each other’s country. At the meeting, municipal officials said that the city will actively promote Vietnamese tourism by organising tourism promotion events in Armenia.

Director of the department Nguyen Thi Anh Hoa said that the department has asked for cooperation from embassies and tourism promotion agencies of other countries in exchanging information and introduce the culture, people and tourism of Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City to people of other countries and vice versa through each other’s communications channels.

ꦐ The department has invited foreign countries’ embassies and tourism promotion agencies to join the International Travel Expo HCMC (ITE HCMC 2024) slated for September 5-7, Hoa said, adding that the city will organise a farmtrip and presstrip in the city in the coming time./.