VIENTIANE, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Annual visitor arrivals in Laos are expected to reach just 4 million, well short of the Lao government's target of around 5 million to mark its Visit Laos Year 2018, a minister has told the ongoing National Assembly session.

Causes of the visitor shortfall included natural disasters across many provinces and the flow on effects to tourism, the facilitation of tourism development is still not good enough, and the rollout of infrastructure development such as roads to tourist sites is slow with insufficient budget, local daily Vientiane Times on Friday quoted Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Bosengkham Vongdara as reporting to the Assembly's ongoing sixth ordinary session recently.

Other challenges consisted of limited air services to transport visitors, sluggish tourist attraction development, along with slow service through immigration points and at tourist sites.

Although authorities have made improvements compared to the past, problems still remained, said the Lao minister.

To help address these issues and increase visitor numbers next year, the ministry will focus on promotion especially to Chinese tourists under the planned Visit Laos-China Year 2019, the minister said.

The ministry in cooperation with Chinese authorities will conduct colorful activities as well as improve the quality of hotels and restaurants. In addition, the ministry is cooperating with Information, Culture and Tourism Departments across the country to raise service standards in anticipation of the influx of Chinese tourists, said the report.

The Lao government has set a target to increase the number of Chinese visitors from 400,000 to 1 million and will attract about 5 million visitors in total for 2019, Bosengkham said.