Visiting pagodas at the beginning of Lunar New Year has become an age-old tradition of Vietnamese people. (Photo VNA)
Tourism in central and southern regions have reaped the benefits of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday (February 14-20), reporting an impressive surge in the number of visitors.
In the seven-day period, the Hue Complex of Monuments, a World Cultural Heritage site and famous tourist destination in the central province of Thua Thien – Hue, welcomed 117,000 visitors, including 47,000 foreigners. The total number of tourists to the site saw an increase of nearly 50% from the same period last year. The site offered free entrance to visitors on the first three days of the lunar year (February 16-18).
The Da Nang Tourism Department said the central coastal city served closed to 300,000 tourist arrivals during Tet, up 14% from 2017. The number of international visitors amounted to over 132,000, increasing 14% year-on-year, while the figures for domestic visitors were 164,893 and 5%, respectively.
The Mekong Delta city of Can Tho, meanwhile, received 700,000 tourists, 10% higher than last year, according to its Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Le Minh Son, the department’s deputy director, said more than 99,000 people came to the city on an average daily basis. The city’s tourism revenues during the holiday topped VND75.8 billion (US$3.3 million), up 10% from last year.
Within just five day of Tet (February 16-20), over 1 million people flocked to the southeast region (excluding the number of visitors to the local Vung Tau beach during the period).
Binh Duong province announced that its popular Dai Nam tourism site attracted nearly 150,000 tourists during the period, a seven-fold increase compared to normal days.
Dong Nai province highlighted the number of more than 100,000 arrivals per day recorded in the local Buu Long tourism site; the figure represented an annual growth of 30%.
Tay Ninh province, home to the popular spiritual tourism destination of Ba Den, also posted a 5% increase in the number of visitors, at over 100,000 visitors per day.
NDO
