Nguyen Van Tran, general director of APEX-Vietnam Co. Ltd., the trip’s organizer, told that the survey would visit destinations from the north to the south, including Hanoi, Quang Ninh, Hue, Danang, Quang Nam and HCMC.

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh will meet with special guests to encourage the tour operators to bring more Japanese tourists to Vietnam. “We want Japanese tour operators to come and see a true image of Vietnam, a safe destination for partners to sell tours,” he said.

APEX is a Japanese-Vietnamese joint venture company specializing in inbound tours for Japanese tourists. Anh said that visitors from Japan were sensitive about the flu pandemic and information on H5N1and H1N1 had cut into the number of Japanese tourist arrivals.

“We have 1,000 bookings. It’s a good result. We hope the market will recover soon,” Tran said.

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism and JATA last year signed a memorandum of understanding to boot tourist exchange between the two countries and increase the number of Japanese visitors to Vietnam to 600,000 in 2010.

Vietnam welcomed nearly 393,000 Japanese tourists last year, down 6.1% compared to 2007. In January-July, 198,000 Japanese visited the country, down nearly 12% year-on-year.

Under the memorandum of understanding, JATA pledged to include Vietnam as one of ten destinations of its Visit World Campaign. The association will help Vietnam promote itself to Japanese people.

JATA launched the Visit World Campaign to increase the number of Japanese outbound travelers to 20 million in 2010 compared to 17.3 million people last year. The association so far has selected Guam, Hawaii, South Korea, Hong Kong and France for the campaign.

The agency and tourism entrepreneurs and hoteliers will join the JATA World Travel Fair in Tokyo from September 18-20. One more promotion trip to Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo will take place September 11-18.