Travel expo opens up new opportunities

The three-day international travel expo in HCMC wrapped up Saturday in what a local tourism official described as a big success in terms of business networking as thousands of meetings have been conducted.
La Quoc Khanh, deputy director of the HCMC’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that buyers and sellers had more than 2,500 meetings and exchanges among themselves to discuss business, meaning a better flow of information among potential partners in the coming time. This number of meetings is up around 1,000 compared to last year’s event.
The yearly event was organized by the department, Singapore’s IIR Exhibitions Pte Ltd and VINEXAD with an aim to promote the tourism industry of the three Indochina countries.
“We will have final statistics about results of these meetings. However, based on the first reports, hoteliers had better results than tour operators,” he said.
Nguyen Thi Thuy Dzung, sales and marketing director of the Hon Tam beach resort in the coastal city of Nha Trang, said the resort had met with 30 foreign buyers and many local guests. Some partners were eager for future cooperation like Thomas Coke of Sweden, who said they would return to Vietnam in December for a long-term deal, while some other foreign buyers have promised to make online bookings after the event, she said.
“Hon Tam is a newly opened resort so partners wanted to visit to our booth to get new information. It’s a good chance for us,” she said.
Dzung said that one more good thing from this travel expo was that it had attracted many foreign-invested joint ventures, those who have an in attracting foreign visitors as potential guests of resorts like Hon Tam.
Nguyen Minh Quyen, deputy director of Ben Thanh Tourist Travel Service Center, said the tour operator and partners from Cambodia and Laos had reached a common voice in making common products for outside tourists at fixed prices.
“It’s a good result from this year’s travel expo,” he said.
According to him, tourism products of the three countries are similar so travel firms need to cooperate for making competitive products. “For the reason, we’ve agreed on further talk to identify the market’s segments and potential guests to raise the competitiveness,” Quyen said.
He also said that three American partners who met him in the travel expo would work together to launch detailed programs for luxury and golf tours in the coming times.
Khanh from the tourism department said that the number of international buyers was smaller than expected and than last year’s event, which is unpleasant to the organizer.
“We’ve expected over 150 buyers would come but some buyers from Hawai, Hong Kong and Japan canceled their attendance due to the impact from the Typhoon Ketsana,” he said.