The Quang Ninh Tourism Agency has been working with its partners inJapan and the Republic of Korea to establish tourism representativeoffices in the two countries.

The offices willpromote Vietnam’s culture, economy and tourism, especially in theprovince of Quang Ninh. They are scheduled to open later this year.

Recently, Quang Ninh and the International Culture Association WANOKAI(Japan) have worked together on ways to spur tourism development.

The number of Japanese visitors to Vietnamrises annually but the number of those returning to the country is stilllow, Hamada-Kazuki, Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Japan noted atthe working session.

In another move, executives andexperts from the tourism industry met in Hanoi last month to seek waysfor the lucrative and fast-growing non-smoking industry to be moresuccessful.

At the conference, Vietnam NationalTourism Administration Chairman Nguyen Van Tuan called for theestablishment of Vietnamese tourism representative offices in Japan, theRepublic of Korea and Russia, which are among Vietnam's key partnermarkets.

In the first quarter, Vietnam earned 53.5trillion VND (about 2.5 billion USD) from tourism, about one third ofthe sector’s total revenue in 2012, statistics from the Ministry ofCulture, Sports and Tourism show.

In theperiod, the sector welcomed 1.8 million foreign visitors, mostly fromChina, the Republic of Korea and Japan, and 12.3 million domestictourists.-VNA