HCM City issues licenses to three foreign travel offices

The HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Tuesday awarded three new licenses to foreign travel firms to open their representative offices here.
The three companies are Griffin Travel Pte. Ltd of Singapore, Westeast Travel of the U.K., and Grand Circle Corporation of the U.S. These are the first licenses issued after a long time of disruption due to the absence of a guiding circular for the Tourism Law.
The National Assembly passed the law in late 2005, and the Government issued a guiding decree in June 2007. However, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism did not issue the circular to give detailed guidance for the Government’s decree until one year and a half later.
“We are pleased with receiving the license and will move our main representative office from Hanoi to HCMC,” Ngo Van Manh Cuong, regional general manager of the Grand Circle, told the Daily at the ceremony on Tuesday.
The company has spent a long time for this date. In late 2008, the company even wrote to Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh, requesting an urgent action to clear the legal hurdle so that the HCMC tourism department can issue a license to its office.
Cuong said that in Vietnam, the company is operating tours for American tourists visiting Vietnam and some neighboring countries.
“Our office in Hanoi was opened in 2003. Since then, we’ve brought tens of thousands of American tourists into Vietnam,” he said at the ceremony.
Nguyen Viet Anh, head of the travel division under the department, said that six more foreign travel companies had submitted their applications to open representative offices in HCMC.
“We are working on such dossiers, and expect to hand out licenses to these companies soon,” he said.
Under the tourism decree, coded 92/2007/ND-CP, the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism is mandated to handle the licensing job. The department is obliged to issue a license within 15 working days upon receipt of full and valid applications.
More than 20 representative offices of foreign travel companies are operating in HCMC.
Nguyen Duc Chi, deputy head of the travel department, told the Daily many offices are doing very well in attracting foreign tourists to the country.
A representative of an Australian travel company with an office in HCMC told the Daily on the sidelines of the ceremony that over 10,000 Australian tourists came to Vietnam via his office each year. His company is seeking to renew the operating license for the office.
Around 1.5 million foreign tourists have visited HCMC during January through July of 2009, down 11% year-on-year.