Vietnam promotes regional tourism cooperation
Vietnam seeks to connect Southeast Asian countries to create a "multiple countries, one destination" policy in a bid to promote tourism, said Dinh Ngoc Duc, director-general of the International Cooperation Department under the Vietnam National Tourism
Cooperation is more important than competition when it comes to tourism, he said.
The director-general also said tourism was not the same as other industries where players compete against each other. Rather, cooperation is more beneficial to every party in this industry.
Duc explained that each country had its own attractions that would draw interested tourists. But it would be even better if these countries could connect and become one pack of destinations, he said, adding that this connectivity would be beneficial to travellers while also boosting overall tourism in the region.
Some connectivity campaigns have already been launched, Duc said. For example, Vietnam has been working with other Greater Mekong Subregion countries to create a World Heritage Route, which connects World Heritage sites of each country, making it easier for interested tourists to travel around. It is hoped that such cooperation among countries in the region could be extended and more routes created, he said.
Duc said cooperative efforts to promote tourism in the region had gone very well so far. The goal is not just to attract foreign tourists, but also to try to draw intra-region travellers to visit each country.
He said Thailand and Vietnam had been exchanging a good number of tourists each year. Currently, twice as many Vietnamese tourists visit Thailand as vice versa.
Thailand is a favourite destination for the Vietnamese, he said.
The Thai Tourism Department says more than 550,000 Vietnamese visited Thailand last year, while around 250,000 Thais travelled to Vietnam, according to VNAT’s website.
These numbers could rise after the Asean Economic Community is fully launched, Duc said, explaining that the free flow of labour would result in a greater number of tourists.
However, he stressed, if the tourism industry is really to succeed, stakeholders need to work together. The transport sector is very important: The success of connectivity campaigns is partly due to regional airlines that have offered cooperation and support.
In the past decade, Vietnamese tourism has grown steadily. Last year, about 7.9 million tourists arrived in the country, twice as many as in 2005. And Vietnam is working very hard to develop the industry by improving its tourism products as well as seeking cooperation with neighbouring countries like Thailand, which is renowned for tourism, he said.
According to a report by the World Travel and Tourism Council, in 2014, the total contribution of travel and tourism to Vietnam’s gross domestic product was 367,238 billion dong (Bt595 billion), or 9.3 per cent of GDP, and is expected to grow by 8 per cent this year.
