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.

The event was co-organized by the Vietnamese embassy in the RoK and the Vietnamese faculty at the Hankuk (RoK) University of Foreign Languages (HUFS). It attracted Korean students from the Vietnamese faculties of RoK universities such as HUFS, Chungwoon University, Youngsan University, Pusan University of Foreign Studies (PUFS) and Seoul National University, as well as many Vietnamese students who are studying in the RoK.

The panel of judges was impressed by the contestants’ carefully-prepared performances, said Tran Hai Linh, President of the Vietnamese Students Association in the RoK. He added that the Korean students learning Vietnamese had demonstrated their ability to pronounce Vietnamese as well as their large vocabularies and expressiveness in each part of the contest, which included speaking, singing, dancing and acting.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Vietnamese Ambassador in the RoK, Pham Tien Van, praised the students’ efforts to learn Vietnamese at their respective universities. He expressed his belief that these students will help strengthen the fine relationship between the peoples of Vietnam and the RoK.

The first prize for spoken Vietnamese went to students from HUFS, the first prize for dancing to PUFS and Chungwoon University, and another first prize for acting to students from HUFS.

As part of the festival, the Vietnamese students and their Korean counterparts competed in a mini football competition, which was won by the team from the Vietnamese Students Association in the RoK.

The nearly 100 photos taken by Mexican and Vietnamese photographers are being displayed to celebrate Vietnam’s National Day on September 2 and Mexico’s National Day on September 16.

The works on display, sponsored by the Vietnam News Agency (VNA), Mexico’s Notimex News Agency and the Mexican Embassy in Hanoi, depict Mexico’s countryside, its culture and historical sites. The exhibition aims to promote a better understanding between both countries while enhancing multi-faceted cooperation.

“These photographs will help to give the Vietnamese public a contemporary picture of Mexico, a beautiful country that, though far from Vietnam in terms of distance, shares a similar history and culture,” said Pham Tien Dung, Executive Deputy Director of the VNA’s New Pictorial.

Notimex General Director Sergio Uzeta Murcio, who is on an official visit to Vietnam, underlined that holding an exhibition on Vietnam in Mexico in the near future would help Mexican people understand more about Vietnam’s land and its people.

The VNA established ties with Notimex in 1997. They signed a new cooperation agreement in April on the free exchange of information services in the Vietnamese and Spanish languages and news photos and information videos as well as publishing the Vietnam Pictorial in Mexico and exchanging audiovisual programmes.

The exhibition, at 29 Hang Bai Street, will last until September 20.

Diversity is one of the driving forces behind tourism and can allow all nations to share the numerous benefits brought about by building stronger ties with other countries. As such, tourism is an undisputed catalyst for building understanding, fostering social inclusion and promoting higher standards of living.

This type of unity and collaboration is increasingly important as the world comes together to face climate change and ensure sustainable development, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis. These worldwide partnerships allow for a more effective and global response to issues which concern us all.

Globalization must be understood as a means to improve economic collaboration and international understanding, but not at the cost of diluting the rich cultural diversity present in our world; in this respect, travel and tourism can and must play a key role. Tourism shares the social responsibility of promoting the positive aspects of globalization and as such must direct these global networks towards balanced and sustainable development.

It is against this background that over the years WTD has become a renowned event that has successfully addressed key, tourism related global socio-economic, cultural and political issues.

I am very pleased to be celebrating this year’s World Tourism Day in a continent as diverse as Africa, which has known how to valorize this diversity through tourism and which looks forward to achieving much in the way of sustainable tourism development.

UNWTO would like to thank Ghana for hosting this important event.

We all look forward to celebrating World Tourism Day with you!

Taleb Rifai
Secretary-General a.i.
World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)