Vietnam Tourism Report Q3 2007

Tourist Arrivals On Track

Vietnam's visitor arrivals totalled 335,000 in June, bringing H1 arrivals to 2.12 million. This represented a 4.6% increase from May. In particular, visitors arriving by sea increased by 49.2% m-o-m, to 103,930, indicating the continuing strength of the Asian cruise market. Visitors from Europe and North America increased strongly, reflecting the start of the holiday season. Visitors from Norway, Canada, Sweden, Denmark and Germany increased by 39.9%, 32.5%, 34.7%, 30.3% and 29.3% respectively m-o-m. This increase was matched by a slight decline from visitors within Asia, particularly from China, Malaysia and Thailand. This is in line with seasonal trends and as such we do not believe it represents a slowing trend for Vietnamese tourism.

Indeed, Vietnam is on track to meet our target of 13% y-o-y growth for tourist arrivals. The H107 arrivals figure represents growth of 14.7% y-o-y, with airline arrivals growing particularly strongly. As such, we believe that risks to our forecast will be to the upside, although we continue to believe that the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) target of 18% growth y-o-y is a little optimistic.