HCMC among 10 most viewed tourist cities on TikTok

New York topped the list with 114 million views, followed by Seoul (106.5 million), Dubai (62.7 million) and Jakarta (37.1 million), leading American media company Refinery29 reported, citing a new study carried out by U.K.-based branded clothing company Superdry by analyzing #travel and various related hashtags on TikTok videos.

The rest of the top 10 were Paris, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Bogota and Melbourne.

HCMC, famed for its French colonial heritages, received over 8.6 million foreign visitors in 2019, up 13 percent from a year prior. After over four months of closure, the city, now a Covid epicenter in Vietnam, plans to reopen tourist destinations, hotels and resorts from early October as part of its gradual economic reopening roadmap.

Vietnam also ranked sixth on the list of 10 most viewed countries on TikTok with 107 million hits behind Japan, Russia, Mexico, the U.S. and China.

Foreign arrivals to Vietnam slumped from 18 million in 2019, when tourism revenue was $31 billion, or nearly 12 percent of its gross domestic product, to 3.8 million last year due to Covid impacts.