Tourists travel to the central city of Da Nang for meetings, incentives, conferencing, and exhibitions (Photo: VNA) About 95 percent of domestic tour operators providing tours for foreignvisitors had to stop operating since the beginning of 2020 dueto the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of hotels were closed and millions ofworkers in the tourism industry were put out of work. Therefore, the tourismindustry needs new solutions to overcome the current crisis, Tho said.
Opening borders to foreign tourists is the only solution to recover thetourism sector that contributed 9.2 percent of total GDP in 2019, hesaid.
The effective control of COVID-19 is an advantage for the domestic tourismindustry to be able to welcome foreign tourists from the beginning of the thirdquarter of 2021. Now, regional countries with developed tourism sectors haveplans to open borders to welcome back international visitors, reported the Dau tu(Investment) newspaper.
Specifically, Thailand has announced it would reopen the tourism market forforeign visitors from July 2021, Singapore welcomes international visitorswho have negative COVID-19 test certificates and Indonesia will open its doorsto Bali. Meanwhile, the European Union is planning to provide a "vaccinepassport" to help people travel freely. This also helps the tourismand aviation industries resume operations, according to Tho.
Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, Deputy Director of the Vietnam National Administrationof Tourism, said the administration is studying a plan to reopen thetourism market for international visitors.
Vietnam cannot receive massive numbers of foreign tourists, but itcannot be slow due to competition from other regional countries. Thedomestic travel companies can choose key markets with high demand visitingVietnam, build tour packages and choose a convenient airportdestination and an independent resort to receive the internationalvisitors, Huong said.
Many localities want to welcome international and domestic tourists butthey are afraid of the pandemic, so they do not dare do that, she said.
Luong Hoai Nam, member of the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Council (TAB), said thevaccine is a basic measure and the only way for the world to get ridof COVID-19. The population that gets vaccinations becomes a safe community.This group has about 200 million people and this figure is growing rapidly,especially in developed countries.
Many foreigners are beginning to think about finding an attractive tourismdestination after getting vaccinated. That is a good opportunity for Vietnam torecover plans on economic development, including tourism and aviation sectors.It should not wait for the pandemic to end to plan re-openingits tourism market for foreign visitors. It needs to have this plan now forvaccinated visitors, Nam said.
He said before having the COVID-19 vaccine, a safe area is awell-controlled place like Vietnam, but when this vaccine isavailable, the safe area is a place with high vaccination rateslike Israel. There will be more countries with high vaccinationrates including the US and Europe. Therefore, Vietnam should not beslow to receive visitors from safe areas as well as building up tours forVietnamese tourists to those safe areas.
Vu The Binh, Permanent Vice President of the Vietnam Tourism Association,said the opening of the tourism market for foreigners may faceopposition from many, but Vietnam needs to prepare plans to recover thetourism sector. The association will have a plan to welcome foreignvisitors back from the third or fourth quarter of 2021.
In the first days of March, a lot of travel agencies in HCM City welcomedguests on tours. Some companies also have departures after the Lunar New Year,according to Dai Doan Ket newspaper.
Nguyen Minh Man, head of the TSTtourist Company's CommunicationsDepartment, said that in March, the company organised many tours from HCMCity to domestic tourist destinations such as Phu Quoc, Sa Pa - Hanoi - Ninh Binh,Da Nang, Buon Ma Thuot, Phan Thiet, Da Lat and Hue. It will increase the toursin April.
Other companies also welcomed many groups of tourists in HCM City and toneighbouring provinces such as Dong Nai, Binh Duong and Ba Ria-VungTau.
Most travel companies hope that the tourism market will recoverin the second quarter of 2021.
According to them, in 2021, small groups of tourists is a new trend. Thatmeans a group of 10-15 tourists instead of a group of 30-50 people.
To ensure a safe trip for guests, travel companies affirm that they implementanti-pandemic regulations of the Ministry of Health for the tourism sector.
However, the travel businesses want to have affiliate programmes betweenparties, including aviation, railway, road, service providers, travel agenciesand hotels to create attractive tour packages./.
VNA
