The number of international tourists to Vietnam bounced back in July with 593,566 arrivals, up 12.1 percent over the previous month and 5.1 percent against the same period last year. During the first seven months of 2015, Vietnam welcomed nearly 4.4 million overseas visitors, a yearly decline of 9.4 percent, according to the General Statistics Office. Growing markets included the Republic of Korea, Finland, Singapore, Spain, Italy, the US, Taiwan (China), Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. From January-July, the tourism sector served 43.1 million domestic vacationers and raked in over 214.37 trillion VND (10.1 billion USD) in revenue, a year-on-year rise of 1.5 percent. Currently, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism are working with localities to implement the Government’s resolution on five-year visa exemptions for Belarus and one-year exemptions for five Western European countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The two agencies have also coordinated with the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines to conduct tourism promotion programmes. The tourism sector plans to coordinate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Vietnamese Embassies and Trade Offices in the six countries to popularise Vietnam’s visa exemption policy. At the same time, Vietnam is expected to partake in a number of international tourism fairs in Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain. A promotion programme for tourists from the five Western European countries has been launched with high-quality products at competitive prices, including a 20-30 percent discount for local products, and a tour to three Indochinese countries – Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and another visiting Thailand, Myanmar and Singapore. With this programme, the tourism sector hopes to record a 10 percent growth in the number of holidaymakers in the first half of 2016 and 20 percent in the remaining months of next year. It also expects to greet 1.1 million tourists from the five Western European countries between 2016 and 2018, up 50 percent against 2015.-VNA