VIETNAM - tourism targets US visitors

eTN Asia, 09-15-2006

Three decades after the war in Vietnam, the country is looking forward to welcoming back its war refugees and US war veterans to bolster its booming tourism industry.

Official statistics show, as Vietnam shifts to a market economy, tourism is booming, contributing an average of 7 percent yearly to the country's economic growth for the past ten years. Vietnam is expecting 4 million tourists for the current year.

"A lot of Vietnamese Americans and families of Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam want to come back," Le Dang Doanh, from the Ministry of Planning and Investment told newswires. "The new generation in the US is increasingly interested in visiting Vietnam."

"Any war and any wound needs time to heal. Sufficient time has now passed," added Doanh.

Vietnam is hoping to sell the country's 3,000 km of beaches (1,865 miles), war exhibit museums, and Reunification Palace in HCM City (Saigon) as major attractions to attract its visitors from the US.

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