Under the tourism development plan for the 2011-2020 period, with a vision to 2030, the investment demand for the period is huge, much higher than tourist income can provide. The local tourism sector expects to earn about USD 18-19 billion until 2020 while the investment demand is USD 42.5 billion.

“Budget capital will account for 20 percent and the rest will be mobilised from state-owned, private and foreign-invested businesses,” said Mrs. Hoang Thi Diep, Deputy Head of the Vietnam National Tourism Administration.

The tourism sector will focus on building products for sea tourism, MICE (tourism in combination with business meetings), eco-tourism, medical tourism and green tourism.

Travel businesses believe that tourism products should be further developed in the near future in order to help the sector grow without only relying on natural potential.

The Vietnam National Tourism Administration said that by November 2010, the country had 625 projects in tourism, including tourism estate with a total registered capital of nearly USD 12.3 billion. This figure is much higher than last year’s tourism income of nearly USD 5 billion.

Tourism has also attracted great investment capital in recent years. Over the past three years, from 2007-2010, the number of projects in tourism saw a four-to-five-fold increase from the total capital during the 1998-2006 period.