Representatives from Vietnamese travel firms make a farmtrip to Ninh Binh province (Photo: VietnamPlus) Hanoi (VNA) – The Government Resolution No.82/NQ-CP, which details major solutions to speed up tourism recovery, along with the approval of a new visa policy by the National Assembly in June, represent efforts to provide a major boost to the tourism sector.
Vu The Binh, President of the Vietnam Tourism Association (VITA) reviewed the opportunities and advantages for the sector to grow in an interview granted to VietnamPlus.
Reporter: Following the issuance of Resolution 82 and the loosened visa policy, has VITA designed a plan of action for the coming time?
Vu The Binh: The Government has provided important directions through Resolution 82. Therefore, like other economic sectors, tourism now has advantages to recover and speed its development.
The resolution clarifies tasks for the tourism sector. In order to ensure effective implementation of the resolution, the VITA has built an action plan with clear content and specific responsibilities given to particular agencies.
Vu The Binh, President of the Vietnam Tourism Association (Photo: VietnamPlus) In the action plan, the VITA outlined specific tasks, including re-adjusting the market, building tourism products, enhancing the quality of the workforce in the tourism sector, strengthening tourism promotion activities, and especially exploring the changing demands of foreign tourists.
We will seek consensus in thinking and actions from members of the VITA, as well as VITA chapters in localities to complete the targets that the Government has assigned to the sector. These include developing tourism as a spearhead economic sector and turning Vietnam into one of the 30 leading countries in terms of global tourism competitiveness.
At the same time, the travel business community also aims to effectively tap the advantages brought by the National Assembly’s resolution on amendments to a number of articles of the Law on Exit and Entry of Vietnamese Citizens and the Law on Foreigners' Entry into, Exit from, Transit through, and Residence in Vietnam, thus attracting more foreign tourists to Vietnam.
In the action plan, the VITA also highlighted a number of important tasks, including diversifying the tourism market, increasing tourism promotion, developing human resources to meet the demand of the new development period, strengthening digital transformation among travel firms, gathering ideas and make proposals to competent State agencies for support in dealing with difficulties facing travel businesses.
The association will also encourage the dynamism and creativity of businesses in recovering and developing the tourism sector in line with the motto of “excellent products, professional services, simple procedures, competitive prices, green environment, and safe, civilised and friendly destinations”.
We believe that with 5.7 million foreign visitors in the first six months of this year, the tourism sector will complete the goal of serving 8 million foreign travelers for this year. However, the Government’s expectations do not end there, so businesses must be aware that they should work harder for 10 million and even 12 million visitors to match the real potential of the sector.
Vietnamese travel firms attend a conference on the implementation of the Government’s Resolution 82/NQ-CP (Photo: VietnamPlus) Reporter: In order to quickly make breakthroughs after Resolution 82, which reforms do you think tourism businesses should focus on and what types of tourism should be promoted to suit the global trend?
Vu The Binh: The most important thing is to restructure businesses and renovate business models. The VITA has advised its members to reorganise and streamline their business administration structure to make it more professional and modern with higher quality and sustainability, while reshaping their tourism ecosystem toward higher efficiency, strengthening their competitiveness, expanding market, and developing products in association with building trademarks.
In the new period, the tourism sector should focus on developing major tourism types such as MICE, sport tourism, wellness and beauty care tourism, shopping tourism, culinary tourism, culture tourism, community-based ecotourism, agro-tourism, adventure tourism, and smart tourism.
Travel firms should also concentrate on renewing and upgrading their existing products and building new ones to meet the diverse demands of customers in the post COVID era. Tourism products must be developed in the green and sustainable direction, with greater attention to environmental protection and plastic waste reduction, and to culinary tourism as a typical cultural tourism product.
Reporter: In your opinion, what should the tourism sector change in order to avoid limiting its goals to 8 million, 10 million or 12 million visitors as you mentioned above?
Vu The Binh: After COVID-19 pandemic, travel demand in the world has changed, and so has global tourism development policies. This is also important to the Vietnamese tourism sector.
The travel business community launches an action plan after the issuance of the Government’s Resolution 82 (Photo: VietnamPlus) Currently, the tourism sector’s most important issue is to define what is the most attractive tourism product for travelers and how to best serve tourists to ensure they are satisfied. Tourists savor travel and life, so they want top services off tourism dollars, and this is one of our primary weaknesses.
Therefore, the sector should enhance service quality and develop most suitable products for a particular market of customers. There are still many other things to do, including how to foster coordination among relevant sectors, especially in the supply chain of tourism products, and how to harmoniously combine the products to ensure economical pricing.
Price competition is no longer the main factor, but it is still one of the things that attracts tourists. That’s why travel firms should join hands to offer reasonable prices to both domestic and foreign visitors.
Reporter: How do you evaluate the impact of the new visa policy that the National Assembly has just passed and the impact of Resolution 82 on the roadmap to accelerate growth of the international travel market to Vietnam?
Vu The Binh: The new visa policy, which has just been adopted by the National Assembly, is an important impetus for the growth of the Vietnamese tourism sector. However, we should not expect that the number of visitors will skyrocket with the issuance of a policy. Firstly, in terms of policy, we must wait for guiding documents to implement the amended laws. Secondly, the tourism sector need to prepare communications campaigns that match the variety of tourism markets.
Hoi An is a favourite destination for domestic and foreign visitors (Photo: VietnamPlus) In addition, the sector should prepare tourism products to suit the markets that we focus on. There will likely be delays in this process, so tourists numbers are unlikely to increase immediately.
But the new policy will open a new road for the tourism sector. We should see a large increase in visitors over the next five years. This depends on a variety of factors, initially the visa policy which is considered as an invitation to foreign tourist to Vietnam.
What will tourists enjoy, how will they feel, and will they be fascinated enough to spend their money, and how long will they stay? These are the important aspects of the tourism sector. Answering these questions is the sector’s responsibility, especially for travel firms and service suppliers. The tourism sector itself cannot walk on this journey alone, but needs the support from other sectors to make full use of advantages brought about by the new policy.
Reporter: Thank you very much!./.
