The rapid growth of Vietnam’s tourism industry is continuing in 2017, following the record figures achieved last year.

The Southeast Asian country welcomed 10 million international visitors for the first time in 2016, as Asian demand drove a sharp increase in arrivals.

And this growth trend has continued in the first two months of this year, with Vietnam attracting 2.2 million international visitors in January and February 2017 – up 33.0% compared to the same period last year. This is according to the latest data published by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).

Mainland China (+77.7% to 651,284) continued to lead the way, accounting for almost 30% of total arrivals in the two-month period, ahead of South Korea (+25.0% to 364,504), the US (+11.3% to 130,781), Japan (+5.3% to 129,673) and Russia (+59.7% to 118,049).

Visitors from other Asian countries accounted for 70.8% of the total, and arrivals by air represented 82.4% of visitor numbers.