This work was supported by National Funds through the Fundação para a Ciência e
Tecnologia (FCT) under the projects UIDB/GES/04752/2020 and UIDB/05757/2020. The research
received also financial support under the project “BIOMA—Bioeconomy integrated solutions for the
mobilization of the Agro-food market” (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-046112), by “BIOMA” Consortium,
and financed by European Regional Development Fund (FEDER).
Vietnam has experienced a tourism expansion over the last decade, proving itself as one of
the top tourist destinations in Southeast Asia. The country received more than 18 million international
tourists in 2019, compared to only 1.5 million twenty-five years ago. Tourist spending has translated
into rising employment and incomes for Vietnam’s tourism sector, making it the key driver to the
socio-economic development of the country. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, only 3.8 million
international tourists visited Vietnam in 2020, plummeting by 78.7% year-on-year. The latest outbreak
in early summer 2021 made the sector continue to hit bottom. Although Vietnam’s tourism has
suffered extreme losses, once the contagion is under control worldwide, the number of international
tourists to Vietnam is expected to rise again to reach pre-pandemic levels in the next few years. First,
the paper aims to provide a summary of Vietnam’s tourism characteristics with a special focus on
international tourists. Next, the predictive capability of artificial neural network (ANN) methodology
is examined with the datasets of international tourists to Vietnam from 2008 to 2020. Some ANN
architectures are experimented with to predict the monthly number of international tourists to the
country, including some lockdown periods due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that,
with the correct selection of ANN architectures and data from the previous 12 months, the best
ANN models can be forecast for next month with a MAPE between 7.9% and 9.2%. As the method
proves its forecasting accuracy, it would serve as a valuable tool for Vietnam’s policymakers and firm
managers to make better investment and strategic decisions.
