According to a report from the Municipal Ministry of Tourism, Vietnam’s largest city, HCMC, earned nearly VND3.1 trillion (US$136.4 million) in tourism revenues during the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday.
The report showed that from January 31, the last day of the previous lunar year, to February 6, tourist sites in the southern metropolis welcomed about 280,000 visitors, contributing about VND 300 billion ($13.2 million) to tourism revenues. the city.
###: Vietnam Will Reopen Its Tourism Industry Next Month
During this period, approximately 500,000 hotel rooms were commissioned, generating an income of VND 1.2 trillion ($52.8 million).
More than a million visitors had access to food and beverage outlets in the city and spent 1.6 trillion VND ($70.4 million), the municipal tourism ministry reported.
The most popular tourist activities in the city included visiting the iconic Nguyen Hue Flower Street on Nguyen Hue Pedestrian Street and the Tet Flower Festival at Tao Dan Park in District 1, as well as riding the double-decker bus downtown.
“Ho Chi Minh City is currently a green zone [locality at low COVID-19 risk]making visitors feel safer during their stay and spend more on food and entertainment services,” said a representative from the tourism department.
“Most visitors arrived in the metropolis on the second day of the Lunar New Year to celebrate their Tet break.”
The Ho Chi Minh City has documented more than 514,500 local COVID-19 cases since the fourth wave of virus hit the province last April.
Health professionals in the city of nine million have administered approximately 8.1 million first vaccine doses, nearly 7.3 million second injections and more than 4.5 million third injections.
The city has registered a daily increase of less than 100 cases in recent days, thanks in large part to broad vaccine coverage and natural immunity to mass infection.
As we previously reported, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism had previously proposed that Vietnam fully reopen tourism from March 31, so Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said the country should be prepared to safely reopen to tourism, ideally at the end of March and at the latest at the end of April.
He said Vietnam will reopen its tourism industry when certain populations have received their third Covid-19 vaccination and good immigration control policies are in place.
Vietnam served more than six million domestic travelers and nearly 500 international tourists through its “vaccine passport” program during the Lunar New Year holiday from Jan. 29 to Feb. 6, the National Administration of Tourism told the reporter.
The number of domestic travelers during the nine-day break surpassed that in December 2021, Tuoi Tre News quoted a statement from the municipal ministry of tourism.
The vaccine passport program has been in place since November last year and a limited number of foreign tourists have visited the country so far.
Since then, about 8,500 foreign tourists have arrived in the country, about half of whom have visited selected provinces, while the others were Vietnamese who lived abroad and came to visit their relatives.
