Besides South Korea, two other Northeast Asian markets including Japan and Taiwan are also often in the top countries with the most visitors to Vietnam. From 2015 to 2019, tourists from these two nations to Vietnam constantly increased.

Moreover, with a high level of consumption for outbound travel, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists make promising markets for Vietnam. In which, Japan is the leading country in terms of average spending growth at 7.6%/year.

Taste and behaviors of Japanese and Taiwanese travelers

Among top destinations, Asian countries are always the first choice of these two groups of tourists. In the Japanese market, 60% of flights were to Asian countries. Most notably was the Taiwan market with more than 92% of foreign trips landing in Asia.

Safety, price, and pandemic prevention and control measures are the top factors affecting outbound travel of Japanese tourists. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese pointed to health risks as a prerequisite for going abroad. It’s easy to see that strict COVID prevention measures have had a great impact on them.

Currently, Japanese travelers look forward to moments and experiences worth the money they spend abroad. On the other hand, Taiwanese tourists expect convenient transportation. Maybe the travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic has made transportation a special interest to Taiwanese tourists.

The vast majority of Japanese and Taiwanese travelers prefer standard hotels. They often choose online travel agents (OTAs) to book their trips.

About spending, 42.5% of Japanese tourists said they would like to increase their budget for upcoming overseas trips. In contrast, health concerns and aftershocks from the COVID-19 pandemic still seem to prevent Taiwanese tourists from going abroad. Although 36.4% are willing to pay more for outbound trips, up to 40.7% plan to cut down their spending on travel, saving the budget for health care.

A puzzle for Vietnam tourism

Vietnam is one of the popular destinations of Japanese and Taiwanese visitors. The number of visitors to Vietnam from these two markets grew quite evenly and stably in the period 2015-2019. But Vietnam is not among their top 3 tourist attractions.

In addition, the survey on “outbound travel behavior” by The Outbox Company recently showed that the awareness level of tourists about Vietnam in these two countries is only average. They know Vietnam but do not understand it well.

Just like with the Korean market, Vietnam needs to find a new approach and change previous strategies to shape its image more clearly and prominently. Thereby, we can attract more and more tourists from these potential markets.

Find more details at “Korean-Japanese-Taiwanese outbound travel behavior” Outbox Capture published by The Outbox Company.