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Vietnam hosted nearly 2.4 million foreign visitors in the first 10 months of this year, a year-on-year rise of 27.5 percent, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) told Xinhua on Monday.

The number of tourists increased the most, by 39.7 percent to nearly 1.3 million, followed by overseas Vietnamese returning hometo visit relatives by 23.7 percent to 387,000, and business visitors by 14.2 percent to 427,000, the VNAT said.

In the period, China's mainland, the United States, and Japan became Vietnam's largest tourism markets with the numbers of visitors rising by 27.6 percent, 28.8 percent and 29.6 percent to 646,000, over 225,000 and 216,000 respectively.

"We hope to receive at least 1 million visitors from China's mainland in 2004. This is attainable because we have recently permitted Chinese people without visas but laissez-passers to travel across Vietnam, instead of only seven northern localities as previously," the VNAT deputy head Pham Tu said.

Vietnam aims to welcome 2.8 million foreign visitors and gain tourism revenues of 25 trillion Vietnamese dong (nearly 1.6 billion US dollars) this year, posting respective year-on-year rises of 27.3 percent and 25 percent, he said, adding that the figures would climb to 3-3.5 million international arrivals and over 2 billion dollars in 2005.

To this end, the local tourism sector has focused on raising the quality of services, and launched marketing and advertising campaign at home and abroad. Under a VNAT plan, all of its management officials will have been trained professionally in tourism, 80 percent of the employees mastered foreign languages and information technology, and 90 percent of the training establishments applied standard curricular by 2010.

According to a recent assessment of the World Travel and Tourism Council, Vietnam's annual tourism growth rate will reach 8.3 percent in the next 10 years, ranking the fourth after Montenegro, China and India.