Vietnam National Administration of Tourism has invited India's film industry Bollywood to help promote local tourism and attract visitors from the sub-continent and counter declining tourist arrivals from major markets Russia and China.

Nguyen Van Tuan, director of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, said permits had been granted to film crews looking for locations, and he hoped the Indian film industry would help promote Vietnam as a destination.

Vietnam is taking part in more tourism fairs in India and wants to speed up the opening of more direct flight routes between the two countries.

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism said that in the first four months of this year, overall international tourist arrivals by air declined 9 percent on a year earlier. Visitor arrivals by sea and road declined 30 percent and 25 percent respectively.

It blamed the decline on the fall off of arrivals from China and Russia, Vietnam's two largest tourism markets.

"We are trying to regain the number of tourists from China and Russia. Many measures are being carried out, and I think the market will recover quickly," Tuan said.

The spokesman for a tourism firm in Hanoi said foreign tourists were tightening spending and Vietnam was losing a shrinking market share to Laos and Cambodia.

But there was growing potential for Vietnam in India, where it is still largely an unknown destination, with just 12,300 visitor arrivals from India in 2013.

Lac Viet Tourism Firm estimated Thailand was attracting more than one million Indian tourists a year, and Malaysia was getting 200,000.