Advertising campaign ‘Impressive Vietnam’

Vietnam needs to be wiser
The general director of a travel firm said that it is now the right time for Vietnam to introduce its ‘Impressive Vietnam’ with impressive tour fee reductions to international tourists. But, he said, Vietnam needs to be ‘wise’ in doing that. Meanwhile, Vietnam still does not have professional experts in the field.
Nguyen Quoc Ky, General Director of Viettravel, said that the advertisements need to target Vietnam’s key tourism markets. Especially, he said, the advertisement campaign needs to be specifically designed for the special period of global economic recession.
Ky added that after defining key markets, Vietnam should quickly send staffs to the markets to advertise the tourism promotion program, like Thailand and Malaysia have done in Vietnam.
Experts have pointed out that the two countries have been very professional in advertising their tourism products in foreign markets. Thailand, for example, places advertisement pieces at break times in tennis or football matches televised on famous sports channels like ESPN and Star Sports.
Vietnam can learn something from neighboring countries. Experts say that Vietnam needs to shoot short but impressive video clips with the focus on the tour fee reductions of tours to Vietnam.
Ky said that expenses for advertisement should not be a big problem. More importantly, he said, Vietnam needs to know what to advertise, where and when to advertise.
Meanwhile, Rhona Taylor, International Marketing Director of Sen Rung Tourist, said it would be most effective to advertise on National Geographic TV channel, which will be costly, but ‘the most expensive is the best’.
Having money, but not easy to spend it
Vo Anh Tai, Director of Saigontourist, said that it is impossible to advertise Vietnam’s tourism if there is no money. However, the problem now is the way the money is to be spent.
Tai has every reason to worry about that. In 2008, the government announced a package of VND30bil for tourism advertisement. However, the sum of money has still not been disbursed.
Therefore, travel firms have urged state management agencies to build up the advertisement campaigns soon in order to avoid a repetition.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Thanh Vuong from the Market Department under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has attributed the tardiness to the slow compilation of regulations on building up and implementing a national tourism promotion program.
The official said that the draft regulation had ‘got stuck’ at the Ministry of Justice and it had just been submitted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to the government for approval. After the regulations come out, the content of the advertisement campaign needs to be inspected by a council before money is disbursed.
As such, to date, the advertisement for tours under ‘Impressive Vietnam’ program is still relying on travel firms’ initiatives themselves.
The national air flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, for example, plans to spend $5-6mil to join the advertisement campaign to lure more travelers to Vietnam. The money will be spent on advertisement pieces on the websites with big numbers of visitors in France like Le Monde, Courrier International, and Yahoo Voyage. Besides, the air carrier also plans to organise an impressive programme called ‘Vietnam see tourism festival’ to be held in Paris.
VNAT has drawn up a plan on advertising Vietnam’s tourism on websites that are not costly, like on public means of transport like on buses in big cities in the UK, including London, Manchester and Liverpool.
However, an official of the administration said that this was just an idea, while no detailed plan on the issue had been drawn up yet.