Best promotion is to give tourists good experience

Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Travel and Tourism Summit 2019, to be held on December 9, will focus its discussions on how to improve destination experience for international visitors and air connectivity.

A survey found that up to 80 percent of foreign tourists said they would not return to Vietnam after their first trip to the country because of bad experiences they had here, Tran Trong Kien, chairman of the National Tourism Advisory Board (TAB), told a press conference to announce the event on October 23.

According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT)’s statistics, the number of foreign visitors to Vietnam has been growing at two-digit rate, but the return rate was low at somewhere between 10 – 40 percent. International visitors’ spending in the country averaged only 900 USD, partly due to a lack of diverse products and services.     

So that the best way to advertise Vietnam is to give visitors a good experience, for it to be spread from one people to another and more, he said.

Themed “For Vietnamese Tourism to Really Take Off,” Vietnam Travel and Tourism Summit 2019 will be co-organised by the Government's Advisory Council for Administrative Procedure Reform, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the TAB, the Vietnam Tourism Association and VnExpress.

The summit will offer an opportunity for enterprises and investors in Vietnam and abroad to look at strategies and potential, as well as challenges, for tourism development, said Deputy Director of the VNAT Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong.

Huong said that Vietnam’s tourism was in a period of strong development with high growth. Vietnamese tourism has also been honoured by many prestigious international organisations and won global awards. Most recently, on October 12, Vietnam received four awards at the 26th World Travel Awards for the Asia-Pacific region.

The delegates will also discuss the infrastructure of Vietnamese tourism, and measures to attract investment and training in the field, she noted.

The summit has three major goals. One of those is to promote sustainable development for Vietnam's tourism sector, enhance national tourism competitiveness, and increase the sector’s direct contribution to GDP from 8.39 percent in 2018 to over 10 percent in 2021, Kien said.

Tran Trong Kien, chairman of the National Tourism Advisory Board speaks at the press conference to announce the Vietnam Travel and Tourism Summit 2019. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

“The event will also help promote the image and culture of Vietnam to the world, thus luring more foreign investment to the country’s tourism sector,” he continued.

The third target is to realise a common aviation market called “ASEAN Open Sky”, the first-ever of its kind in the Mekong countries (CLMTV) community, he said.

The summit will include four thematic sessions and a plenary session.

Each thematic session is expected to welcome 150 – 200 guests who will discuss topics such as promotion activities, improving trip planning and travel experience, and connect the aviation market.

The plenary session will involve 2,000 guests. In addition to discussing solutions to tourism and aviation development, the session will also witness the launch of tourism promotion offices in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The organising board will also invite leaders of the world’s largest tourism corporations, along with senior representatives from the World Tourism Organisation and other international agencies.

The first Vietnam Travel and Tourism Summit was held in Hanoi in 2018. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

The first Vietnam Travel and Tourism Summit was held in Hanoi last year, drawing the participation of 1,500 delegates. Within the framework of the event, five trade deals worth nearly 2 billion USD were signed between international partners and domestic enterprises./.