Hanoi  - The number of international visitors to Vietnam was down 16 per cent in the first nine months of this year, the country's General Statistics Office (GSO) said Thursday.

GSO official Pham Tien Nam told the German Press Agency dpa that 2.77 million people visited Vietnam through September 2009, compared with over 3.3 million in the same period last year.

The sharpest declines came in visits from other Asian countries. Visits from neighboring China fell 23 per cent to 339,000. South Korean visits dropped 20 per cent to 287,000, while visits from Japan and Taiwan were down 15 and 13 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, visits from the US declined only 0.7 per cent to 329,000. Tourism from the US has risen in recent months, with visits this September up 36 per cent over September last year, to 35,400, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) website.

The global economic crisis and the swine flu epidemic are the main factors in the decline, VNAT said. (dpa)