Vietnam aims to make popular destinations go viral

Social media influencers who will create content to promote Vietnam’s tourism on TikTok. 

Hanoi (VNA) – Using the latest tourism e-marketing trend to attract more foreign visitors, Vietnam’s tourism authority is working with popular social media platforms this year.

Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT)’s Tourism Marketing Department Dinh Ngoc Duc spoke to the media about this plan.

Vietnam will make more use of e-marketing to promote tourism in 2019, could you please tell us more about these efforts?

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has recently adopted a plan to improve the effectiveness of tourism marketing in Vietnam, which is being carried out. One of the key parts of the plan is to focus more on e-marketing. Clearly, Vietnam cannot stay out of the trend of using technology in tourism marketing.

Currently, the VNAT, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, localities and businesses are ramping up tourism marketing activities, developing website Vietnam.travel and maximising tools on different social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Representatives from TikTok have also come and proposed a plan for cooperation.

We think TikTok is a fast-growing social media network that has big influence on young people not only in Vietnam but around the world. They are potential customers we are targeting in key markets.

We have considered working together with TikTok to launch a campaign that promotes destinations and tourism products in Vietnam via short clips. It will make TikTok users more interested in Vietnam. They then will come to experience and share on TikTok their experience in Vietnam’s destinations.

Da Nang – one of Vietnam’s top destinations – is the first to be in the plan.

It is a tool for us to gain access to markets and, of course, to launch effective promotional campaigns and lure visitors from key markets, and the industry has a lot more to do in many other marketing stages.

We also take advantage of private investment in tourism promotion. We need to effectively use finances from the Government but it is also necessary to raise funding from the private sector.

What will the roadmap for this project look like?

The VNAT has assigned its “Tap Chi Du Lich” (Travel Magazine) to work with TikTok to sign an agreement and launch several campaigns at selected destinations. After a period of time, the two sides will sit together to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaigns as well as the chances we can continue cooperating with TikTok.

The project is being carried out under a partnership among TikTok Vietnam, the VNAT and VTVCab. Besides posting content on TikTok, how effective will this marketing content be on television and other social networks?

Video is a very good marketing tool today. We have been creating video clips lasting 30 seconds, 1 minute and 3 minutes to broadcast on television channels, mass media and tourism promotional programmes. Those posted by users on TikTok are very short, no more than 15 seconds.

Vietnam and TikTok Vietnam ink a deal to cooperate in tourism marketing.

We have also inspired agencies to make short clips on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Videos and clips are a new trend that helps us promote information and images of destinations and tourism products in Vietnam. Videos and clips today can be created and uploaded on many social networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and most recently, TikTok, alongside television channels.

However, different social networks require different video formats in terms of content, duration and quality, though they are all used for a marketing purpose with the same product, the same market and the same approach set by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the VNAT.

Who censors the content and quality of video clips uploaded on e-marketing channels like TikTok?

Currently, TikTok and the Tap Chi Du Lich (Travel Magazine) are coordinating to implement. TikTok is different from other social media platforms as it creates example video clips that influence and inspire users to make their own new clips, creating viral trends.

Thus, the most important thing is that we can influence the content so that all video clips created by TikTok users will go the way we expect.-VNA