According to the General Statistics Office, the May figure was nearly 13 times higher than that of the same month last year. Meanwhile, the number of international visitors rose 4.5-fold year-on-year in the first five months of this year, but was still 95 percent lower than the pre-pandemic corresponding period of 2019. A majority of the foreigners travelled to Vietnam by air from January-May. Five-month earnings from tourism surged 34.7 percent against a year earlier as a result of strong recovery of tourism activities and SEA Games 31, the region’s largest sports event which attracted thousands of athletes, coaches, officials and spectators from other Southeast Asian countries. Vietnam has moved up eight places on the 2021 Tourism and Travel Development Index, according to a report recently released by the World Economic Forum. The country experienced the greatest score improvement, rising by 4.7 percent to leap from 60th to 52nd on the overall index, it added./.