Diep, co-chair of the session, the third of its kind so far, also made public a target to turn Vietnam into a top-five favourite destination of Japanese tourists.

To reach that end, the hospitality watchdog plans to open a representative office in Japan, conduct market surveys and promote the national tourist potential through international and Japanese mass media.

VNAT will also organise cultural tourist events in a number of Japanese cities and arrange field trips into Vietnam for travel agents and press people from Japan.

Maeda Ryuhei, Director General of the Department of Planning and Policy Making under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, who co-chaired the meeting, pledged willingness to cooperate with Vietnam in strengthening the exchange of tourists between the two countries.

Maeda said the number of Japanese arrivals in Vietnam was limited at 360,000 in 2009, making up just 2.4 % of Japanese out-bound tourists. Meanwhile, with merely 230,000 arrivals in Japan in the first seven months of the year, Vietnamese tourists accounted for just 0.4 % of international arrivals in the Cherry Blossom nation.

As a result, the two parties should promote the tourism campaign in each others market, said the Japanese senior tourist expert.

High on the meeting’s agenda was bilateral cooperation in exchange of tourists, investment in tourism and human resource development in the hospitality industry.

The first and second meetings took place in the French-styled mountain resort city of Da Lat in the Central Highlands Province of Lam Dong in 2005 and Tokyo, Japan in 2008.

Japan is among the top ten markets of the Vietnamese tourism sector, with 355,000 arrivals in Vietnam in the first 10 months of the year, representing a year-on-year increase of over 22 %. The figure is expected to surpass 431,000 for the whole of 2010, reported VNAT.