Time for Vietnamese travel firms to step up

Vietnam now has to compete fiercely with regional countries which are more professional and have more experience in tourism promotion in order to attract more tourists to Vietnam.
Arriving in Schezuan province on August 30 to launch tourism promotion activities, the Vietnamese delegation discovered that officials and travel firms from five other countries were present there to do the same thing. As the global economy is recovering, countries in the world are trying to push up tourism promotion campaigns to attract tourists to their countries. And the competition to attract tourists has become stiff.
The stiff competition
Deputy Director of the Market Department under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism Nguyen Thanh Huong said that Thailand Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has announced the master marketing plan for 2009-2010. The plan focuses on the marketing activities to be carried out on Internet and social media, targeting nearby markets and neighbouring countries and new markets as well.
Khun Supawan Teerarat from TAT has revealed that the agency has discovered a new trend: Vietnamese companies are organising more and more conferences, meetings in Thailand.
This has prompted Thai travel firms to launch new tourism products to attract these travellers.
On August 25, Thai agency representatives flew to the three biggest cities of Vietnam, Hanoi, Da Nang and HCM City, to organise workshops to attract travellers and businessmen.
Prior to that, the Malaysian tourism promotion agency also came to Vietnam to promote tourism, hoping to attract 150,000 Vietnamese tourists to the country in 2009.
Vu The Binh, Director of Travel Department under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), said that the competition to ‘scramble’ for tourists has become fiercer and that only those with reasonable and effective promotion campaigns will succeed.
Success will come if Vietnam has long-term plan
Ngo Hai Anh, a representative from Malaysia Airlines, said that Vietnam needs to have more programmes to popularise Vietnam’s tourism, or Vietnam’s image will fall into oblivion.
Anh said that in other countries, airlines always cooperate with travel firms, shop and hotel chains to promote tourism. Moreover, they also receive the support from the Government to attract more tourists.
Vietnam is also following this way
According to Nguyen Van Tinh, Senior Official from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, besides the roadshow in five big cities of China, Vietnam will popularise Vietnam’s tourism in the world’s leading tourism magazines, on CNN TV channel and invite international press to Vietnam.
Kai Marcus Schröter, who has been living in Vietnam for 12 years and was once a tourism consultant to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, stressed that the tourism promotion will succeed only when Vietnam has a long-term promotion programme.
Any promotion activities, he said, need to be carried out under a well-designed and long-term programme. The advertisement campaigns need to be carried out in the right places, at the right time and with reasonable frequency.
He does not think that money is a big problem for Vietnam. What Vietnam should do is to restructure the apparatus of tourism management and reconfigure its budget.