The KOPIST Forum was held via an online platform with the attendances of experts and officials from Korea and KOPIST partner countries. The online forum consists of a keynote speech, presentations and panel discussions by global tourism leaders to review COVID-19 policy response and tourism strategies for future crises.

Speaking at the Forum, VNAT’s Vice Chairman Ha Van Sieu shared about Vietnam's situation after 2 years of hibernation from the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, Vietnam piloted an international tourism reopening scheme last November and fully reopened tourism from 15th March 2022. He stated further, travel policies are favoured to be almost the same as pre-pandemic, international tourists entering Vietnam are not requested to show any proof of vaccination or COVID-19 tests. After fully reopening, the number of international visitors to Vietnam in May reached 136 thousand visitor arrivals, which doubled the number in April. The figure for domestic tourists in the first five months of 2022 went up to 49 million arrivals, an increase of 26% compared to the same period of 2019 pre-pandemic.

In order to well prevent the COVID-19 pandemic as well as promote the reopening of tourism, the Government of Vietnam has implemented flexible, adaptive and synchronous policies such as: enacted the Socio-Economic Recovery and Development Program, step-by-step issued numerous policies to ease the travel conditions same as pre-pandemic. At present, there is no restriction on visa, immigration procedure or health requirements. Vietnam tourism has put great efforts into tourism promotion and marketing. We have successfully implemented the national campaign “Live Fully in Vietnam'' and organised big events in many destinations. The campaign received concerns and support from all local authorities and airlines, tourism enterprises and communities, emphasised VNAT’s Vice Chairman Ha Van Sieu.

The Vietnam tourism industry also organised the Visit Vietnam Year 2022 in Quang Nam Province under the theme “Quang Nam - Green destination”. The application of digital transformation has been upheld recently to change and accelerate the sustainable development of Vietnam tourism in the near future.

According to VNAT’s Vice Chairman Ha Van Sieu, COVID-19 is a challenge and a chance for Vietnam in particular and other countries in the world in general to learn and transform into a more resilient industry for future crises. For the next period of recovery, Vietnam tourism will continue to develop its core value of quality products, recover the skilled tourism labour force, keep supporting tourism businesses and communities, and most importantly, improve the destination’s competitiveness and resilience.

At the Forum, delegates listened to presentations on Tourism Recovery and Resilience, National Strategies to Achieve Resilience and Recovery in the Tourism Sector, Measures for Cooperation among Countries for International Tourism Recovery, etc.

In the framework of KOPIST Forum, there will be an Online Training Programme held from 4th to 15th July 2022, developed for tourism officials of Korea’s partner countries, aims to provide an opportunity to experience and share exemplary development cases with the most qualified tourism experts in Korea.

Source: TITC

Edit: https://travel.vietnamarab.net/

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