While the Chinese market has not yet fully returned, South Korea becomes the largest market of Vietnam tourism in the first three months of 2023 with 810,938 arrivals, accounting for 30% of total inbound tourists.

Before the pandemic, Korea was one of the top outbound tourism markets with the highest expenditures in the world. In 2019 only, Korean people made 28.71 million trips and spent up to 32.74 billion USD for outbound travel. It made South Korea a top sought-after market for many countries, especially those whose economies depend on tourism.

Vietnam has always been a favorite destination of Korea in recent years thanks to its beautiful beaches, rich cuisine, advantages in flight routes and reasonable costs. The number of visitors from this nation has increased rapidly over the years and once surpassed China. The number of Korean travelers to Vietnam in 2019 nearly quadrupled compared to 2015. According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, Korean tourists accounted for 23.8% of total international arrivals and was Vietnam’s second largest tourist market in 2019, following only China.

After COVID-19 was controlled, South Korea soon opened and welcomed international tourism back starting April 2022. It returned quickly and replaced China, which was still closed, to become the largest market of Vietnam tourism. By the end of the first 3 months of 2023, the latest statistics from the National Administration of Tourism show the preference and loyalty of Korean tourists as the market keeps leading the number of visitors to Vietnam.

However, the awareness of Korean tourists of the Vietnamese destination image is quite low. Outbox’s recent survey shows that Korean visitors’ understanding of Vietnam is just at an average level. If Vietnam can come up with a new approach to enhance its image, it is possible to attract an even larger number of visitors from South Korea.

In addition, let’s have a look back at the proportion in 2019, trips to Vietnam accounted for 15.3% of the total 28.71 million Korean trips abroad. For China, the number of trips to Vietnam only accounted for about 3.7% of the total 155 million outbound trips. Obviously, South Korea is a potential market with stable growth of travelers. Increasing the attraction and continuing to maintain the growth of Korean tourists will help Vietnam tourism to have one more durable source market, gradually getting rid of dependence on a certain market.

 

Despite welcoming many Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese visitors, Vietnam has not really left any great footprints to them. We need to solve this issue quickly to reach the target of 8 million foreign visitors this year.

Context

South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are key markets of Vietnam’s tourism in recent years. These three markets accounted for 34.3% of total international arrivals to Vietnam in 2019. Looking at this number, most will think that the larger the number of visitors, the more visitors know about Vietnam. In fact, from the survey results “Tourism behavior of three markets in Northeast Asia” by The Outbox Company, the awareness level of Vietnamese destination image is quite low, just 4.1/7 points.

The awareness level is very important as it will influence tourists’ decision to choose a destination. Although the number of visitors to Vietnam grows every year, the awareness level of visitors from these three markets has not really corresponded to the growth potential.

In 2019 alone, the number of visitors from South Korea accounted for 23.9%. The number is huge, but in fact, most don’t know much about Vietnam. Only 18% of respondents were confident about their perception of the Vietnamese destination image.

Japan is also a potential market, but the majority of tourists (62%) admitted to being relatively knowledgeable and up to 21% have little or no awareness of Vietnam.

Similar to Japan, 21% of Taiwanese visitors have low awareness and nearly two-thirds (63%) think that their understanding of Vietnam is only average – quite good.

How to be more fascinating?

We can say that Vietnam’s tourism is facing difficulties in accessing and promoting its images to tourists from the three markets mentioned above. Though there are many scenic spots, diverse culture, heroic history and many tourism advantages, the stimulus programs and tourism products offered do not seem to really reach and help tourists to know about Vietnam. This partly explains why tourists’ awareness of the destination is not high.

Besides, with the low awareness level, it is uncertain that new visitors will consider choosing Vietnam as their next destination. Therefore, we need to change our approach or offer more diverse promotion programs to attract tourists, taking full advantage of domestic tourism in terms of geographical distance, number of flight routes, beautiful natural scenery, and more.

In order to further understand and satisfy visitors from key markets, businesses and destinations should conduct market research. From there, they can make the most detailed and relevant decisions to not only attract but also keep them coming back again and again.