Taiwan and Vietnam reached consensus on several issues at a conference on tourism cooperation held in Vietnam on Monday and are hoping for total visitor arrivals from each other’s market to reach 2 million per year in the near future.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the Tourism Administration said the two sides reached consensus on cooperation in tourism promotion, talent cultivation, and travel safety management, while aiming for 2 million mutual visits.
No timetable was given for when the two sides hoped to hit the target, but it would be nearly 60 percent higher than the 2019 figure of 1.26 million at a time when travel is only just now rebounding to pre-COVID levels.
From January to October 2023, Taiwanese travelers made 679,087 visits to Vietnam, close to the number in 2019, when Taiwanese traveled to Vietnam 853,257 times for the year as a whole, the Tourism Administration said.
During that same period, a total of 332,000 overseas nationals arrived in Taiwan from Vietnam, which was on pace to match the pre-COVID level of 405,396 visitors for all of 2019.
It was not clear, however, how many of those visitors were coming to Taiwan for leisure travel.
Whether in 2019 or this year, however, only about 36 percent of those visitors said “leisure” was the purpose of their visit, according to Tourism Administration figures, as many Vietnamese who come to Taiwan are migrant workers.
