Vietnam cannot attract tourists because of low budget for tourism promotion?

VietNamNet Bridge – The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has

attributed the stagnation of the tourism industry to the lack of money to run

tourism promotion campaigns. However, experts believe the problem does not lie

in the lack of money, but in unreasonable use of money.

 

The articles about Vietnam’s slow tourism development have repeatedly appeared

on local newspapers recently.

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs–Nguyen Thanh Son, said that he feels ashamed

of the stagnation of Vietnam’s tourism. While tourism is considered as the key

industry which can more easily make money than many other industries in the

context of the global economic crisis, it has not made any considerable progress

over the last many years.

The comment by Son appeared on an interview given to Tuoi tre after a big

trouble occurring at the recent international tourism trade fair in Berlin,

where a picture of Chinese landscape was displayed at the Vietnamese stall.

The trouble was so serious that it has raised anger among the public, while VNAT

has been violently criticized for the mistake.

In the interview, Son also pointed out the unprofessional way of promoting

tourism Vietnam has been following. He frankly said that VNAT has not succeeded

in many works, including the cooperation with localities and travel firms to

attract more tourists.

VNAT has been insisting on waving visas for foreign tourists. Over the last 5-7

years, Vietnam has unilaterally waved visas for the citizens from 7 countries,

namely Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia and Finland,

accepting the loss of $50 million.

Meanwhile, Vietnam cannot get anything in return for the visa waving. The number

of tourists to Vietnam has been increasing, but inconsiderably, while the sum of

money Vietnam can receive from the increase is not high enough to offset the

loss from visa wavering.

It seems that Son said a crude thing to VNAT and touch its on the raw. Nguyen

Van Tuan, VNAT’s General Director then replied that VNAT would ask Son for an

open dialogue about the problems of Vietnam’s tourism.

Tuan, while admitting the shortcomings in VNAT’s works, blamed the current

problems to the modest budget for tourism promotion campaigns.

He said that the tourism industry only has VND30-40 billion a year to carry out

promotion activities. The sum of money is really too small if noting that the

neighboring countries in the region such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore spend

$80-100 million a year on the activities.

He also complained about the slow disbursement of the budget, saying that this

makes VNAT unable to take initiative in programming tourism promotion programs.

VNAT has to spend most of its time on the administrative procedures to have the

money disbursed, and it has no more time left for preparing for the promotion

campaigns or the advertisement programs at international trade fairs.

However, the explanation by Tuan cannot ease the public criticism. An Ninh Thu

Do newspaper has reported that readers have expressed their dissatisfaction

about Tuan’s statements.

Nguyen Dinh Thong, a Hanoian, said he prefers booking outbound tours instead of

domestic ones, because he wants to receive high quality services which deserve

his money.

No one can say that Thailand, Singapore or South Korea have more beautiful

landscapes than Vietnam, but the countries still can attract more tourists than

Vietnam, because they are better in promoting tourism, have better

infrastructure items and provide better services.

Compiled by Thu Uyen

Vietnam cannot attract tourists because of low budget for tourism promotion?