Vietnam sea tourism infrastructure, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will organize a conference in Hanoi next month to discuss ways to spur the cruise ship sector.

An official from the Travel Department of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism said the conference was initiated given an increase in cruise ship arrivals and would be attended by leading tourism officials, experts and travel companies.

Currently, the tourism authority does not have a strategy in place for developing sea tourism interns of promoting the sector and building the necessary infrastructure.

Since 2002, Vietnam has received more than 300,000 cruise ship visitors. The SARS outbreak in 2003 caused many potential tourists to travel elsewhere, but with the number of visitors growing in recent times, the tourism authority expects visitor arrivals by sea to recover soon.

Tour operators have contributed to the increasing number of cruise ship visitors through establishing new partnerships and calling on cruise ships to come through Vietnam.

A report from Saigontourist Travel Service Co. released last April said several large cruise liners from the U.S., Europe and Asia such as Royal Caribbean, Princess Cruises, Costa Croisieres and StarCruises are looking to bring guests to Vietnam.

In January-October of this year, Saigontourist received 36,200 cruise ship passengers, an 87% increase from the same period last year.

Nguyen Anh Tuan, a senior expert of the Travel Department, told the Daily that there are only a few travel companies, such as Saigontourist, Tan Hong and OSC Travel, receiving such high-class passengers in the country.

"We lack the strategy, promotional activities and key infrastructure such as cruise terminals, for receiving the guests," said Tuan at a tourism development conference last July.

Experts believe that sea tourism is booming in Asia because cruise ship passengers have grown too familiar with the Caribbean and South America and Europe is too expensive for some travelers. As a result, a handful of Asian countries are constructing infrastructure to receive these passengers.

Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam is a major destination for receiving cruise passengers in the country, but does not have a proper cruise terminal.

China recently built a cruise passenger terminal in Shanghai capable of receiving up to three cruise ships at a time. Other ports in China such as the ones in Dalian and Qingdao can also receive large cruise ships and are both set to have new terminals by next year.

A cruise terminal in Vietnam was mentioned in the 2007-2010 Tourism Development Program, but no further headway has been made.

Sea passenger arrivals in Vietnam from 2001-2006

Year	int'l visitor arrivals	sea     passengers
2001	2,330,050	284,612
2002	2,627,988	309,080
2003   2004	2,428,735 2,927,873	241,206 263,359
2005	3,477,500	200,471
2006	3,583,486	224,081

(Source: Vietnam National Administration of Tourism)