The first Japan tourism office will be launched in Vietnam after a cooperation meeting recently held by the tourism committees of the two countries. Officially called the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO), it will open in Hanoi with the dual purpose of spreading knowledge about Japan to Vietnamese and at the same time supporting Vietnam specifically in its tourism sector.

For a certain period of time, Vietnam and Japan have always had a close helping relationship especially when it comes to the development of their respective territories. But the establishment of the Vietnam-Japan Tourism Cooperation Committee in 2015 composed of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism and the Japan National Tourism Agency further strengthened this mutual cooperation and boosted their tourism sectors considerably.

In 2010, Vietnamese tourists who visited Japan were 42,000. This significantly increased 4.4 times or 185,000 in 2015. In the first ten months of 2016, 611,000 Japanese visited Vietnam, an equivalent of 11% increase from last year. There are five airlines which fly between Japan and Vietnam wherein the first half of this year earned 945,000 passengers who flew round trip between the two countries. The number is even expected to reach 1.9 million by the end of 2016.

The Vietnam Tourism Association has been ahead of Japan in its tourism cooperation effort and established its first representative office in Tokyo in 2014.