1.8 million foreign tourists visit Vietnam in Q1

(VEN) – The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recently announced its tourist attraction results for the first quarter of 2013. Vietnam received more than 1.8 million foreign tourists in the first three months. According to the reports of Culture, Sports and Tourism Departments of cities and provinces, during the Lunar New Year, the average hotel occupancy rate in some tourism centers such as Ha Long, Sa Pa, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Mui Ne, Vung Tau, Da Nang, Hoi An and Phu Quoc was 85-90 percent (in some places the rate was 100 percent). Tourism businesses and tourist accommodation providers seriously publicized their prices and sold products and services exactly at their publicized prices. Localities intensified supervision over operations and services of tourism businesses to ensure security and safety for tourists and dealt on a timely basis with acts which violated existing regulations or led to a decline in the quality of goods and services as well as arbitrary price increases. Social evils decreased. However, service prices in some places increased by 20-45 percent compared with normal days. In the first quarter of 2013, the number of visitors to localities as well as their revenues from tourism considerably increased compared with the same period of 2012 (Quang Ninh received over one million visitors, eight percent more than in the first quarter of 2012, with tourism revenue reaching VND385.3 billion, up 14 percent; Hai Phong: 818,628 visitors, up 13.26 percent; tourism revenue VND435.13 billion, up 21.99 percent; Thanh Hoa: 568,720 visitors,…