Khanh Hoa to have more direct flights to Kazakhstan

Budget carrier Vietjet Air will begin carrying tourists from Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, to the central province of Khanh Hoa later this month, amid strong tourism recovery post pandemic.

The move is an outcome of cooperation between the Vietnamese airline and Anex Vietnam Travel and Trading Co., Ltd., said the latter's deputy managing director Bui Quoc Dai.

As planned, the carrier will operate two weekly flights on the Cam Ranh-Almaty route from the end of this month to April next year.

The first flight is scheduled to depart from the Cam Ranh International Airport to the Almaty International Airport on October 25. It will return from Kazakhstan the following day. Each flight will transport some 180-200 passengers, according to Dai.

Tourists from Kazakhstan will spend their vacation for one to four weeks at hotels and resorts in Khanh Hoa, go shopping and take a city tour, among others.

The first flights are expected to bring delegations to Khanh Hoa to survey tourism potential and advantages of Vietnam and the central province.

In the first nine months of 2022, Khanh Hoa welcomed over 2.1 million tourists, including 150,000 foreigners, a 7.3-fold increase over the same period of last year.

Vietnam welcomed 1.87 million foreign visitors in the first nine months of the year, up 16.4 times year-on-year, with South Korea and the U.S. leading the pack.

However, the number of foreign arrivals was 85.4% less than the same period in pre-pandemic 2019, the General Statistics Office (GSO) reported.