VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam has spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars to show its beautiful landscapes on famous television channels CNN or
BBC, or to advertise on taxis in London.
However, Vietnam
remains an unknown and hidden charm to foreign travelers.

The arrow
that failed to reach the target

In recent
years, Vietnam
has been paying more attention to promoting tourism. However, the result
remains modest. In the second half of 2010 alone, Vietnam spent 5.3 billion dong to
run advertisement campaigns on CNN, which gobbled up 12 percent of the total
budget for the yearly national tourism promotion program.

A mini survey conducted by the Vietnam Economic Forum conducted on 200 foreign
travelers showed that 77 percent of foreign travelers have never seen
information about Vietnam’s tourism in mass media, advertisements or at tourism
trade fairs. Ninety-three percent of polled tourists said they never see the
advertisement pieces on BBC and CNN.

Vietnam also spent money to place advertisements on 27 taxis
out of 10,000 taxis in London in the UK for six
months. However, local dwellers said they never see the advertisements.

Vu Huy Vu,
Deputy General Director of Saigon Tourist, said Vietnam
needs to do many more things to popularize Vietnam’s tourism in the world. “Vietnam needs to have more and more publications
introducing Vietnam’s
tourism potentials. It needs to set up tourism representative offices in other
countries to promote tourism,” he said, adding that other regional countries
like Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines all have representative offices in
Europe and the US for tens years.

Meanwhile,
a cheap but effective communication channel – Internet – has been ignored.

Ben Chua is
a Singaporean person who builds and runs vietnam720, an website that uses
interactive products like videos, audios to introduce attractive destinations
in Vietnam.

“If you
access to yoursingapore.com, you will find everything about Singapore. For
example, if you type “art”, the website will show all the information about
arts, from the events to places for excursions or the hotels near art centers,”
he said.

Ben Chua
said he has an account on Twitter to listen opinions from people about Vietnam. There
is a tweet posted in every 10 seconds, which means 36,000 opinions come every
hour. However, no official agency has replied to the opinions.

What is a new
image for Vietnam?

In mid
January 2011, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism VNAT officially
announced the result of the logo creation competition for the new period. The
slogan “Vietnam
– a different Orient” has won the competition. However, after two months, the
slogan has not been approved to become the new slogan of Vietnam’s
tourism in the new period.

It seems
that foreigners still see Vietnam
as a war torn country, rather than an attractive destination in peacetime. It
is because Vietnam
is still busy looking for a new suitable slogan to be introduced to the world.

“Vietnam is a
friendly, joyful country, where the prices are reasonable. However, the images Vietnam
introduces to the world do not reflect these things,” said Tim Russell,
Managing Director of Come & Go Vietnam travel firm.

He believes
that since Vietnam cannot
build up a reasonable tourism brand, only five percent of tourists return to Vietnam for the second time, while 50 percent of
tourists come to Thailand
for the second time.

He went on
to say that Vietnam
only has been trying to attract the tourists who are interested in the culture
and discoveries, while it has not been trying to attract holidaymakers.
Meanwhile, tourism does not only mean discovery, but also means relaxing, sunbathing,
playing golf and water sports, meals, nightlife and anything that is a part of
a comfortable life.

He believes
that Vietnam
should look for professional consultants and should carry out surveys in many
places in order to build up a professional marketing strategy.

Lan Huong