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| File photo of tourist boats anchored at a beach in Phu Quoc island in southern Vietnam in April 2017. (File photo by=AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] HANOI: Officials said that Vietnam plans to reopen the resort island of Phu Quoc to vaccinated foreign visitors in late November, while the country looks to reboot its tourism industry after almost two years of closure, AFP reported.
Phu Quoc, which lies around 10km off Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand, boasts white-sand beaches and crystal clear waters, as well as mountains and thick jungle. It attracted around 670,000 visitors and earned more than US$18 billion dollars from international arrivals in 2019, with authorities hoping to turn it into a tourist mecca in the style of Thailand's Phuket or Indonesia's Bali. From Nov 20, "charter flights" for international travelers with vaccine passports will be welcomed to the island, the government said late Friday (Oct 22).
After that, between late December and the end of March, the island aims to receive up to 5,000 foreign arrivals on similar charter flights. Tourists will need to show vaccine certificates together with a negative COVID-19 test result before being allowed in. According to authorities, they should come from places with "a high safety record on Covid-19 prevention, like some parts of Europe, the Middle East, North-East Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, and Australia". Vietnam has reported more than 880,000 Covid cases and around 21,500 deaths.
