| The Vietnam
National Administration of Tourism VNAT is, for the first time, considering
hiring a consultancy firm to promote Vietnam’s tourism, according to VNAT’s
General Director Nguyen Van Tuan.
In the
interview given to Tien phong newspaper, Tuan said that after choosing the new
logo and slogan for Vietnam’s
tourism for 2011-2015 “Vietnam
– a different Orient” suggested by Cowan Vietnam, VNAT is consulting the
choice with tourism experts, travel firms, relevant ministries and press
agencies. If a consensus can be reached, VNAT will ask the Government for the
permission to use the new logo and slogan for the tourism promotion activities
in the time to come. VNAT plans
to hire Cowan to build a strategy on tourism promotion for the new period. This
is for the first time a professional consultancy firm is hired to help the
Vietnamese tourism industry to carry out its promotional campaigns. 2010 was the last year in the
2000-2010 development period of the tourism industry. What will be new in the
next development period? VNAT is
planning the promotion campaign for the national tourism for the 2011-2015
period, targetting both on Vietnam
and foreign countries. There are some big tasks for 2011. First, VNAT will
suggests the Government should increase the budget for tourism promotion to 70
billion dong in 2011 (the figure was 41 billion dong in 2010). We have proposed
the Government and the Ministry of Finance to use one dollar from the income
from every foreign tourist for this purpose. This would give the tourism sector
five million dollars in 2011, or a total of more than 100 billion dong to carry
out marketing campaigns. According
to the General Statistics Office, on average, a foreign tourist spends 1024
dollars in Vietnam.
Tourism experts believe every dollar spent on tourism promotion will bring
12-15 dollar in income. 100 billion dong on tourism promotion would be a modest
budget compared with those of other
countries in the region. In 2011, Vietnam will increase its promotion campaigns in
the nearby markets, including Japan,
South Korea, China, Taiwan and ASEAN countries. It will
also reach farther, to markets canto provide the tourists withlarge spending
habits, such as Western Europe, North America, Russia
and Australia.
VNAT is determined to enhance the work of its tourism promotion agencies,
making the them more capable, powerful
and professional. Some experts say that the problem
now for Vietnam’s
tourism is the low budget or lack of money, but that the bigger problem lies in
the lack of effective promotion strategies . This explains why VNAT have once
not used all the allocated money ? I’ve heard
this opinion. It is true that once in the past, we did not use all the money we
were allowed to spend. It was because of the too complicated procedures, and
the mechanism under which VNAT did not have full power. For example, in order
to spend the allocated budget of 41 billion dong in 2010, at first, VNAT had to
draw up the list of activities, then submitted the list to the management
ministry, and then to the Ministry of Finance. In order to get the money
disbursed, VNAT had to, once again, build up the detailed estimates of spending
to submit to relevant ministries. In general,
in order to carry out an event, the tourism sector had to spend one third of
the time on administrative procedures and disbursement formalities. In many
cases, even though we could see specific opportunities to to attract travelers,
these were missed because it would have taken too much time to draw a plan and
wait for approvals.
In order to settle the problem, we are trying to persuade relevant ministries
to accept a new mechanism which gives more power to VNAT. Currently, the Travel
Department is in charge of promoting tourism in Western Europe and China, while
the Market Department is in charge of promoting tourism in other markets.
However, VNAT has proposed to develop the Market Department into a tourism
promotion centre. If the plan is approved, the centre will have its own stamp
and account, meaning it will operate separately and receive instructions
directly from VNAT.
Vietnam attracted the record high number of five million foreign touristsWill
VNAT hope for a higher number in 2011? The figure
represents an increase of 1.2 million tourists, or 30 percent, over 2009. This
was really a sharp increase, and such a high growth rate will not be seen in
the upcoming years. We have even predicted a slowdown in the next years. We hope to
receive 5.3-5.5 million foreign tourists in 2011 and serve 30 million? domestic
travelers. Source: Tien
phong | 
