Cheap rate not enough to attract travelers

Vietnam has gained a high ranking in the world’s tourism map. However, analysts have warned about the unsustainable development of its tourism industry.
The latest report released by World Economic Forum (WEF) shows that Vietnam’s tourism competitiveness has jumped by nine rankings to 80th out of 139 countries and territories. Prevailing over other countries in terms of the number of cultural heritages and natural landscapes, which are evenly distributed in different areas, and in terms of cheap rates, Vietnam’s tourism is inferior to other countries in terms of ability to exploit the market. Vietnam ranks behind some rivals such as Singapore (10th), Thailand (41st), Indonesia (74th) and Malaysia (35th). Meanwhile, Vietnam has more world’s cultural heritages than the countries: it has nine, while Indonesia has eight, Thailand three, Malaysia has two and Singapore does not have any world’s heritages.
Vietnam slow in adapting to new circumstances
Nguyen Minh Man, a senior executive of Vietravel, said that though Vietnam has great potentials to develop tourism, it has not paid appropriate attention to attract travelers. According to Man, Thailand proves to be more professional in promoting tourism. It organizes tours for journalists from many other countries, who come for excursions and give opinions about every shopping or entertainment opportunity. The opinions, plus the surveys it conducts, can give suggestions about how to design tours to target different groups of tourists. Meanwhile, Vietnam always organizes tourism promotion campaigns in a large scale, with little specific focus.
Regarding the tourism infrastructure, Man believes that Vietnam is not inferior to any other regional countries, but it still unclear about the re-investment level. That explains why only a low percentage of tourists want to return to Vietnam. “A lot of natural destinations do not receive appropriate re-investment, and even domestic travelers do not want to return, let alone foreign travelers,” Man said.
WEF considers Vietnam a country that is really safe for tourists, but it has warned tourists about the beggar problem, street vending and traffic congestion.
The WEF’s report mentioned the way Malaysia followed in the crisis period in 2008-2010 to promote tourism, showing how the country quickly adapted to the new circumstances in the crisis. For a short term, the nation attracted Chinese tourists with cheap rates, while it pursued a long term program to popularize its cultural diversity and eco-tourism.
Meanwhile, Vietnam has been very slow in adapting to the new circumstances and it has been relying too much on traditional travelers from North America and Europe.
Competing with cheap rates?
According to WEF, cheap rates prove to be the competitiveness of Vietnam’s tourism. Vietnam ranks the 16th among the 139 countries in terms of low rates. However, according to Nguyen Van My, Director of Lua Viet Travel, this should be seen as a supporting factor, while low rates cannot play the decisive role in attracting travelers. Man agrees, saying that tourists always consider the service quality and destinations’ quality before considering the rates.
Dr Pham Trung Luong, Deputy Head of the Tourism Research and Development, also thinks that Vietnam has not paid reasonable attention to preserving environmental landscapes and therefore make natural landscapes less attractive in the eyes of foreign travelers.
Though Vietnam has jumped nine places in the ranking, it still has many things to do. According to WEF, problems still exist in the programming for infrastructure development and in the investments to develop tourism complexes. The transportation infrastructure still cannot meet the requirements of the national economy, including the tourism sector. This has led to the low quality of tour routes and prolonged excursion times, thus making the destinations less attractive.
Man from Vietravel believes that Vietnam should apply necessary measures to re-invest in tourism destinations. “It is necessary to set up a regulation, forcing travel firms to extract their profits to reinvest in the destinations, or we will not be able to retain travelers,” he said.