The Government News on September 16 quoted Indian Ambassador to Vietnam Sandeep Arya as forecasting that about half a million Indian tourists would travel to Vietnam this year.

The Indian Ambassador made the forecast after Vietnam welcomed a big tourist group with 4,500 employees of Indian billionaire Dilip Shanghvi on a four-day holiday in late August.

The event showed that traditional tourism for leisure is expanding to club with business what they call MICE or MICE meetings, incentives, conference and exhibition.

So mixing business together with leisure and tourism is a new trend with the first group of 4,500 Indian tourists from Sun Pharmaceuticals.

Ambassador Sandeep Arya assessed that this is a good direction for expansion of such tourism flow. This is the first time Vietnam handled the first group of MICE from India with an average of four to five hours of flight.

Ambassador Sandeep Arya attributed the outcomes to Vietnam's efforts of promoting tourism, increasing awareness and developing good facilities, infrastructure and growing flight connections.

According to the ambassador, Vietnam is a very attractive destination for Indian tourists as evidenced by increasing number over the last 2-3 years.

He was pleased to see growing number of compliments to the Government of Vietnam and Vietnam as a country in promoting and successfully increasing the flow of tourism into Vietnam from India and other countries.

Similarly, wedding is also another promising area for the tourism sector in Vietnam because people go in large groups. It's a group of 500 or more come together for 3 to 5 days at a particular venue and they actually are full time utilizing those facilities.

Besides Ha Long, Da Nang, and HCM City, which are well-known tourism destinations for Indian visitors, the Ambassador suggested Vietnam introduce more ones with outstanding facilities like Phu Quoc Island, Nha Trang and Sa Pa.

Mr. Sandeep Arya also assessed that the new e-visa policy of Vietnam is working very well in both directions for Indians coming to Vietnam and Vietnamese travelling to India. Normally in three-day time or 72-hour time, a visa applicant gets a visa issue.

Hence, the policy played an important role in terms of greater movement of tourism in both directions.

As the peak tourist season in Vietnam from September this year to April next year, the Ambassador suggested Vietnam increase the number of flight connections with about 55-56 flights per week, apply streamlined visa processing regulations and raise greater awareness about newer places in Vietnam where visitors can travel.

The Ambassador said that over the last year, the Indian embassy in Vietnam has connected travel agencies from Vietnam with different parts of India, including the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

"We are trying to take them to newer facilities so that there is greater awareness and greater availability of options for tourists to travel to newer places, which also are very outstanding and very well known," he added.

The second effort is in terms of expanding the flight connections. More airlines looked for opportunities to open up direct connections between India and Vietnam from three to four months ago.

Actually, Air India also started flying directly, becoming the fourth airline apart from VHJ, Vietnam Airlines and Indigo. Three of them have been operating for the last two years plus.

So, addition of a new airlines and constant exploration, the Ambassador anticipated that VHJ would announce connection between Da Nang city to Ahmedabad next month.

In addition, travel agencies are also offering interesting packages. So, coordinating with them and encouraging them to offer such facilities is something which is also becoming a good trend.

The Ambassador also proposed that this is an interesting trend of using cinema to promote the tourism in some ways.

On the occasion, he introduced a movie called "Love in Vietnam", which will be started shooting later this month.

Indian producers have announced that they will be shooting this film at three, four destinations in Vietnam starting with Da Lat. Da Lat is not strictly very much on the tourism map as of now. So, but this shooting, the first shot will be done in the city. So, this shooting will go on for the next four months. So, this is an Indian film company with a Vietnamese actress and an Indian actor. And as the title shows, you Love in Vietnam, it's about a love story between them.

"There is a lot of warmth, interest and curiosity among Indians towards Vietnam and same is true to an extent among Vietnamese towards India," Ambassador Sandeep Arya said. 

Finally, he stressed that a greater tourism, greater visits, greater understanding, greater appreciation, greater respect and greater support for friendship between the two countries are good diplomatic aspect of tourism flow between the two countries.