Vietnam lacks ‘conductor’ for tourism promotion campaigns

 In order to ‘rescue’ Vietnam’s tourism industry from the global financial crisis, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) has been pushing up tourism promotion activities. However, for many reasons, the promotions remain unprofessional and ineffective.
Advertising Vietnam on TV, how?
Though experts expressed doubts about the effects of the advertisement campaign on BBC carried out in March 2009, MCST still decided to advertise Vietnamese images on CNN channel in order to attract more foreign tourists.
According to Head of the International Cooperation Department under MSCT Nguyen Van Tinh, negotiations have been wrapped up, while the promotion programme has been submitted to the Ministry of Finance for the ministry’s budget approval. It is expected that a CNN team will arrive in Vietnam on August 20 to start working on the project. The advertisement piece, which focuses on advertising sea tourism, Central Highlands and Phu Quoc Island, is expected to be broadcast on CNN in mid September.
Tinh affirmed that his department thoroughly studied the market before making a decision to launch the advertising campaign. As Vietnam aims to introduce its images to the whole world, BBC and CNN channels were chosen.
Tinh said that the ministry is now negotiating with two other channels, Star Sports and Star World, on advertising projects. However, these projects would not be undertaken until 2010, since there is no more budget for 2009.
Saigontourist’s Director Vo Anh Tai noted that this is the first time Vietnam has dared spend big sums of money to advertise on international TV channels to lure more tourists. However, he said that in order to make the advertisements effective, Vietnam needs to follow a long-term advertising plan. If Vietnam stops advertising now, information about Vietnam would be ‘buried’ by a lot of advertising pieces posted by regional countries like Malaysia, Thailand and China, which are also trying to promote tourism.
As Vietnam targets Western Europe and North America as key markets, it needs to post advertisements on BBC and CNN broadcasts in the regions. However, Vietnam still has to advertise on CNN in Asia-Pacific, since it is too costly to advertise on CNN Europe and North America.
How to spend money effectively?
In a recent international workshop in July on tourism promotion, Nguyen Thanh Huong, senior official from the Vietnam National Tourism Administration, said that since the budget for tourism promotion is limited, the disbursement mechanism remains problematic.
Huong said that though Vietnam has attended important international tourism events, it has not spent money on supporting activities like press conferences, reception and visual advertisement.
Nguyen Duc Quynh, Deputy Managing Director of Furama resort, noted that other countries like Thailand, the Philippines or Indonesia always have impressive national pavilions at trade fairs. Meanwhile, Vietnam appears very dim at trade fairs. Only a few travel firms are able to attend such important events, because each of them has to pay $2,000.
Vietnam has been focusing its strength on the ‘Impressive Vietnam’ programme over the last year aiming to lure more tourists. However, no money has been budgeted for promoting the programme.
VNAT’s Head Nguyen Van Tuan admitted that Vietnam has not had any big and effective promotion programme, saying that it is simply because of its financial limitations.
Deputy Head of the Tourism Research Institute Dr Pham Trung Luong, on one hand, admitted that Vietnam does not have much money to advertise for tourism, on the other hand, pointed out that Vietnam does not know how to spend money effectively. The Government last year approved the budget of 25 billion dong for tourism promotion, but the sum of money has not been used up.
According to Luong, there are two problems in tourism promotion. First, Vietnam does not promote professionally. It is necessary to try to understand what clients need so as to build up suitable products for advertising.
Second, it is necessary to think about how to advertise to obtain the highest possible effectiveness. Luong said that Vietnam has been applying the same method of promoting tourism for all markets, even though different markets have different characteristics.