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The recovery of Vietnam's tourism industry is too slowly
Vietnam tourist numbers are growing at a slower
rate than other regional countries.
Regionally the recovery of the tourism industry has been growing since July
2009. The hotel room occupancy rate in Singapore has increased again to 70
percent, while the figure is 75 percent in Malaysia. Even Thailand, considered
as the country which suffered most from the global financial crisis, has also
seen the number of foreign tourists increasing sharply with the hotels in Phuket
always fully occupied on weekend.
Meanwhile, the number of tourists to Vietnam keeps decreasing, even though it is
now the high tourism season. In September, only 294,000 foreign tourists arrived
in Vietnam, a decrease of 6.4 percent over August. The number of tourists in the
first nine months of the year decreased by 16 percent over the same period of
2008, a more difficult year than 2009.
In fact, Vietnam began taking action right at the beginning of the year to deal
with the global economic crisis. The national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines has
joined forces with travel firms to launch big promotion campaigns, offering the
35-40 percent discount rate of tour fee to travelers.
Nevertheless, travel firms say that the tour fee discount is not powerful enough
to lure more travelers.
As for foreign tourists, discount are not the most important factor which makes
them decide to travel. They travel to the places that attract them, not to the
places that offer lower tour fee.
The Vietnam National Tourism Administration (VNAT) believes that the problem
lies in the way the tourism promotion campaigns are carried out.
Dr Do Cam Tho from the Tourism Development Research Institute, said that many
localities in Vietnam organise culture festivals, but none which really have
special characteristics to lure tourists. Meanwhile, elsewhere many festivals,
which were initially just local festivals, can well attract travelers thanks to
good marketing.
South Korean ginseng festival in October attracts thousands of travelers, while
annual French Beaujolais wine festival or Italian chocolate festival lure
millions travelers every year. Every year, Nigeria receives hundreds of
thousands of foreign tourists who come to attend the Arugungu fishing festival.
Tran Truong Kien, Chairman of Thien Minh Travel Firm, said at a recent workshop
on Vietnam’s tourism prospects that Vietnam expects to receive six million
foreign travelers by 2010, but it may have to settle for four million.
Thibault Paquin, Asian Development Director of Accor Group, also said plans for
receiving six million foreign travelers by 2010 will be fulfilled only if
Vietnam can carry out a series of measures, such as building more 3-4 star
hotels in secondary cities, putting more international airports into operation
and developing more strands of tourism.
Antoine Sirot, an executive of Ethic Consultant, noted that tourism sites can be
overloaded sometime and left idleat others, while tourists cannot get best
service in the high season.
Source: VietNamNet/NLD |
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