Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, pinning high hopes on the development of the country’s tourism industry, targets to triple its revenue to around US$10-11 billion by the year 2015.

In its tourism development strategy draft, the Government body expects the country’s tourism sector to welcome seven to eight million foreign travelers and around 32 to 32 million local tourists a year in 2015. This compares well with last year’s international arrivals of some 4.2 million and revenue of around US$3.5 in 2008.

In 2020, Vietnam’s hospitality industry should be a strong player in the region with around 11 to 12 million foreign tourists and 45 to 48 million domestic travelers, according to the draft.

The draft was presented to tourism experts, tourism entrepreneurs, officials in a meeting held by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) in Hanoi.

Nguyen Van Tuan, Director General of the VNAT, said that the VNAT would complete the strategy after receiving feedback from participants. The strategy will then be submitted to the Government this month, with clear plans about building new products, developing markets as well as building the national tourism images among others.

The VNAT has once expected Vietnam would receive around six million foreign visitors in 2010. However, this target now looks highly unlikely as the country received merely 3.4 million international travelers in this year to date, down 12.3% year-on-year.

Tuan said that the goal of six million looked unattainable because of slowdown in the tourism industry but he was confident that Vietnam tourism would grow strongly in the next ten years.

He expected Vietnam to welcome around 4.2 to 4.5 million international tourists in 2010 and a huge number of domestic travelers.

Vietnam has 764 international travel firms, and a huge number of domestic travel companies as well as 10,800 accommodation facilities with 208,000 rooms.