Campaign aims to lure back tourists

Sitting in his cyclo under the sun on a street in downtown Ha Noi, Doan The Ngoc, an employee of the Ha Noi Culture Tourism Co, waits for work.
Last year he worked about four to five hours a day, taking tourists on his cyclo around Ha Noi. This year, his pedalling is down to two hours a day.
"There are less visitors. My income is also down," Ngoc said.
He, and other members of his groups, said they hoped more visitors would arrive so that they can earn a reasonable wage.
In the first eight months of this year, the total number of foreign arrivals in Viet Nam was about 2.4 million, a 17.7 per cent decrease on the same period last year. Swine flu and the economic downturn have been blamed.
This has led to a spate of advertising in foreign countries to try and lure more visitors. On September 3, a campaign was launched in London to promote Viet Nam’s image on 27 taxis.
From June, the Department of International Co-operation, which comes under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, paid BBC World to carry hundreds of half-minute spots in the Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States.
Late last month, a seminar to promote Viet Nam’s image in China was held with the participation of the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Hoang Tuan Anh.
The department is also working with Star Sports, Star World and ESPN channels to launch advertising programmes next year.
Promotions have also been carried out with international magazines and newspapers, such as magazines run by the airline JETSTAR and World Heritage run by UNESCO.
Advertising images of the country will be published on the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) Members Handbook - the tourism guidebook 2010.
In early October 2007, Viet Nam carried out its first tourism promotion programme on an international channel, CNN Asia and spent US$320,000. The 30-second nightly spot was aired for three months, mainly to promote tourist attractions like World Heritage-listed Ha Long Bay, Hoi An and Hue.
"The launching of tourism promotion activities on international channels or magazines plays an important role in boosting the country’s tourism," said Nguyen Van Tinh, director of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s International Co-operation Department.
"We cannot see its effectiveness right away, but a long-term and synchronised strategy is of great necessity," Tinh said.
He cited as an example the number of visitors to Viet Nam increasing from 3.6 million in 2007 to 4.2 million in 2008, saying it resulted from the advertising on CNN.
However, some still doubt the effectiveness of promotions. The vice director of the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism’s marketing department, Nguyen Thanh Huong, said there was no country strategic marketing plan for boosting tourism, and the co-operation between state management bodies and tourism enterprises was not close enough.
"The country does have promotion programmes in foreign countries, but provides no finance for auxilliary activities, such as press conferences and receptions," she said.
Dang Bao Hieu, director of Focus Travel Company, said the Impressive Viet Nam Campaign launched this year failed to meet expectations.
"The tourism publications introduced by the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism were unattractive and few," Hieu said.
Nguyen Duc Quynh, deputy director of Furama Hotels and Resorts Corporation, added that when participating in international tourism fairs, other countries in Asia, such as Thailand, the Phillipines and Indonesia, often had far more impressive and attractive showrooms than Viet Nam.
Nguyen Van Tinh, meanwhile, said countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore spent from $70 million to $120 million for their tourist promotions each year, while Viet Nam’s budget was only $1.5 million.
But to some experts, money is not what it’s all about. According to the Deputy Director of the Institute for Tourism Development and Research, Pham Trung Luong, Viet Nam’s tourist promotion has two weak points.
"You have to first research quite carefully what visitors need to build tourism products. If we don’t really have the products, advertisements can sometimes have a counter effect," he said.
Secondly, he said that separate promotion products for certain markets had not been thoroughly studied.
"Instead, promotion campaigns are launched the same way in every market," he said, adding that there were a wide spectrum of outlets to consider, including the internet, posters and brochures - and that different approaches were often needed for different countries.
Luong said Viet Nam lacked a separate tourist promotion office. This is because in 2007 the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) was merged into the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The Tourism Promotion Department under the Viet Nam’s National Administration of Tourism was then dissolved. Promotion activities were then carried out by both the marketing department of the VNAT and the International Co-operation Department of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
"Because of all these changes, we lost many tourist professionals," he said.
Despite claims that the CNN advertising had remarkable success, there are some who doubt it.
Jocelyn Stokes, a visitor from the United States, who has been in Viet Nam for a week, said she knew Viet Nam mostly through the American War and from her friends.
"I have never seen an advertisement about Viet Nam on the CNN or the BBC," Stokes said.
However, the ministry’s Nguyen Van Tinh believes that the number of visitors to Viet Nam will start increasing by the end of the year.
Deputy director of the VNAT, Nguyen Manh Cuong, predicts that as the world economy recovers, the tourism sector will quickly regain strength.
Ealier this month, Smart Travel Asia Magazine based in Hongkong declared that Viet Nam’s most popular tourist destinations, Ha Noi, HCM City and Hoi An were on their list of the top 10 most favourite destinations in Asia.
Hopefully, all of this means that cyclo drivers like Ngoc won’t have to keep on sitting in their own vehicles instead of peddling wide-eyed tourists around the Old Quarter.