EU gives $15m to develop sustainable tourism

The European Union yesterday officially announced a grant of 11 million euros (US$15 million) to help develop an ‘environmentally and socially responsible' tourism sector, the ever biggest tourism programme in Viet Nam.
Poor and disadvantaged groups such as women and ethnic minorities would have more opportunities to benefit from the programme, said Sean Doyle, the Ambassador and head of the EU Delegation. Responsible tourism would provide the foundation for creating a more sustainable, competitive and higher yield tourism sector, he said.
This five-year programme aims to train and qualify tourism administration staff from central to local levels in environmentally and socially responsible tourism policy making, planning and management. Over 5,000 tourism sector workers in disadvantaged areas will also be trained.
Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) representative Vu Quoc Tri said by 2016 the programme aimed to have trained about 1,000 management staff from small- and medium- sized enterprises, helping improve the effectiveness of public-private partnerships in tourism activities.
"The most challenging thing about this programme is that it could train only a certain amount of staff while demand is much greater. There are many other things that need to be done to make Vietnamese tourism sustainable and efficient," Tri said. "The EU, as the financial donor, can only help us with what was committed to in the agreement, we need to gradually understand that and stand on our own feet while solving other issues."
Developing a sustainable coastal tourism sector is the top priority for the next 10 year development plan of the VNAT which will be submitted to the Prime Minister, according to Tri. Under the plan, his department intends to attract wealthy tourists who can pay for high-quality packages. "We can expect them to pay for expensive packages only if the quality of our tourism services improve," he said.
"This EU backed pro-gramme will also aid the VNAT's plan because it will help train tourism planning officials and improve policy making capacity."
Besides the financial support from the EU, Viet Nam will commit 1 million Euro ($1.4 million) to the project.