Would international travelers like these continue to be interested in Vietnam? (PHOTO BY NGHIA PHAM)

The annual Tourism Year program aims to advertise the tourism potentials of a specific region to international visitors.

It was initiated in 2003 by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT).

The government’s recent decision to cancel next year’s “Tourism Year” festival raises questions about Vietnam’s ability to sell itself efficiently and attract international travelers.

Last year it was held in the northern mountainous province of Thai Nguyen, attracting around 1.2 million tourists, including 25,500 from abroad.

But that was a rare success.

A review of the festival since inception found that preparations for it and its marketing are not very effective.

VNAT chose Dak Lak Province as the host site of Tourism Year 2009 to promote the hospitality industry in the central highlands. But provincial authorities backed out citing shortage of facilities and time for preparation.

Deputy director of Dak Lak’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Phan Tam Thanh, recently told a local newspaper that the province only has 45 hotels and guesthouses with 1,700 rooms, quite insufficient to host the festival.

After Dak Lak withdrew, neighboring Gia Lai Province asked to host the event, Nguyen Manh Cuong, deputy head of VNAT said, but eventually organizers decided to shelve the plans.

“We made mistakes while selecting the host for this year’s program,” Cuong said. “We were going about organizing events for locals when our main focus should have been to attract foreign tourists.”

Director of Saigontourist Travel Service, Vo Anh Tai, said the promotional activities for Tourism Year remain a big concern.

With limited budgets and weak links to key foreign markets, the bulk of them end up focusing on the domestic market, he said. Selecting a location for the program is also problematic. While some destinations have “hidden” tourism potential, poor infrastructure and low quality tourism products rule them out as hosts, according to Tai.

These issues also plagued this year’s program in the Mekong Delta’s Can Tho City.

“My family was disappointed during our recent visit to My Khanh Tourist Village [for] the Tourism Year,” Amercian visitor Amanda Paxton said. “Food and fruits were sold at high prices, while beggars kept harassing us.”

David Johnston, a British visitor who attended last year’s event in Thai Nguyen, told Thanh Nien Daily: “The program would not have been successful if organizers had not had enough facilities to meet visitors’ basic needs, like enough public restrooms.”

According to VNAT’s Cuong, the tourism body should re-evaluate the purpose of the program to focus on developing the right products and marketing plans to ensure good preparation.

Each Tourism Year could be based on a theme, he said – for example seabased tourism, ecotourism, or sports and adventure – and promotions in major overseas markets strengthened and tourism products further developed to draw more visitors.

Reported by Vinh Bao