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HCMC – The HCMC Tourism Department signed a cooperation agreement on July 19 with the Saigontourist Group to promote tourism, including making joint efforts to arrange for international travel agencies to visit the city to study local tourism.

Under the agreement, the two sides will invite international travel firms, which will operate tours to Vietnam, and leading overseas agents of the Saigontourist Group to participate in the International Travel Expo HCMC 2020 set for September. Each delegation from a country or region will include an estimated 10-15 people.

Moreover, the city’s tourism authority and Saigontourist will roll out at least one tourism product per year, with the two sides set to fous on developing night-time and healthcare travel products.

Two new travel programs linking the city with other localities will also be introduced each year. Currently, the city is organizing travel programs in cooperation with the Mekong Delta's 13 provinces, five Southeastern provinces, the Central Economic Zone and the northern region.

The cooperation plans under this agreement will be carried out from now till 2025. Although multiple deals on tourism have been signed with localities and airline partners, this is the first time that HCMC has inked a deal with a travel group to boost tourism.

As the biggest tourism hub in the country, HCMC normally serves up to 50% of the nation’s international tourists.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic slashed the number of visitors to the city in the first half of this year by over 54% to 9.4 million arrivals versus last year's figure. The sharp decline has left many enterprises in the field struggling to operate their businesses. Some even saw their tourist arrivals and revenues plunge 95%-100% compared to those of last year.

As for the Saigontourist Group, it manages over 100 hotels, resorts, restaurants, travel agencies, tourism training schools and many other facilities. The HCMC-based tour operator welcomes some three million visitors annually, with turnover reaching dozens of billions of dong.