Hwaseong Palace in Suwon, a 25-minute drive from Incheon International Airport, is one popular destination for tourists – including Vietnamese – to the RoK. VNS Photo Minh Thu

HÀ NỘI – Vietnamese tourists to the Republic of Korea (RoK) will receive preferential treatment under a campaign run by the Korean Tourism Organisation (KTO) from September 2 to 8.

With the theme “Korea Welcomes You! - 2019 Vietnam Welcome Week”, the KTO will hold a series of activities specially designed to support Vietnamese visitors including welcome events at the airports and a check-in guide in Vietnamese at Incheon International Airport’s Terminal 1.

As part of the campaign, information counters will be set up to serve Vietnamese travellers at Incheon and Gimhae airports and a number of tourist destinations in Seoul and Busan.

Vietnamese tourists will be offered presents and discount coupons for 20 to 40 per cent off when buying tickets to well-known tourism sites like Lotte World, Everland and Petite France, or when using certain services such as Eland Cruise or Songdo Marine Cable Car.

Independent travellers and members of package tours organised by travel companies participating in the campaign will be treated to various gifts.

Park Jong Sun, head of the KTO Office in Việt Nam, said the impressive growth of Vietnamese visitors has made Việt Nam one of the key markets in the RoK tourism sector’s Southern Policy, hence the organisation of the campaign.

“KTO has organised various events to promote tourism in Việt Nam and received positive results, showing the RoK is always a favourite destination for Vietnamese people,” he said. “We are running the campaign to pay gratitude to Vietnamese tourists. We will try our best to introduce more attractive destinations and information about tourism in the RoK and provide the highest quality services for Vietnamese visitors.”

According to the organisation’s statistics, in the past five years, the number of Vietnamese tourists to the RoK grew by about 34.1 per cent each year on average, the highest among central and eastern Asian countries. In the first eight months of 2019, the RoK hosted about 370,000 Vietnamese visitors, up 25.7 per cent from the same period last year. VNS