It’s like a spotlight shining on Vietnam on the world stage but the tourism industry, which generated around VND56 trillion (US$3.5 billion) in turnover last year, is still trying to develop its own brand.
When a professional young Filipino woman accepted a job as the sales and marketing director of an international hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, her friends questioned her decision to leave the Philippines for such an “unknown” destination.
“They probably would not have been surprised if I decided to move to Singapore or Thailand but they don’t know what special things HCMC could offer a foreigner like me,” she said.
Her friends’ ignorance about HCMC and Vietnam highlights one of the major problems confronting Vietnam’s tourism industry.
The tourism industry, in recent years, has made an effort to build up its brand name to improve its competitiveness.
But the results of these efforts, according to many people, have been modest, leaving the nation still “hidden” from public perceptions, just like its slogan “Vietnam – the hidden charm.”
“Vietnam is very beautiful and rich in potential for developing tourism but she is still a ‘sleeping beauty’ and the question is just how to wake her up to turn her into an international beauty,” Yip Hoong Mun, deputy CEO of CapitaLand Vietnam Holdings, told a recent conference in HCMC.
As an official in charge of advertising Vietnamese tourism’s image, Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, deputy head of the Tourism Promotion Department, admitted she felt unsatisfied at the results achieved so far.
Huong said the sector still lacked a detailed, flexible and workable plan to build a national brand for the tourism industry that could capture tourists’ attention.
In its strategy to develop tourism until 2010, the Vietnam Administration of Tourism (VNAT) set a target of welcoming some 6 million international visitors a year.
Under the plan, tourism is to be developed to make Vietnam a favored destination.
However, the strategy did not outline the specific steps for polishing the country’s image and promoting its tourist products.
Instead, it just vaguely said the tourism sector should promote many original products and focus on ecotourism, culture and history.
According to Huong, the nub of the problem is that current tourism promotion programs don’t define either the products or the appeal of the destination.
Currently, the allure of Vietnam as a tourist destination is not internationally recognized, Huong said.
This made the task of building a national brand name even more essential, she said.
“We usually say Vietnam’s ecology and culture is its main advantage but we don’t show the specifics of what a visitor will experience here, what they will remember,” Huong said.
Making an effort
Though still awaiting a breakthrough, the tourism industry is currently making an effort to build a brand name.
Individual tourist businesses are trying their best to gain a firm foothold in the market.
Vo Anh Tai, director of the Saigontourist Travel Service Company, said building the country’s brand name would require long-term marketing and promotion of the country as a tourist destination.
Advertising was one way to help foreign partners know more about Vietnam so they could decide whether to become a sales or distribution channel for local tourism companies, he said.
Trusted domestic tour operators could persuade foreign counterparts to believe in their service quality, Tai added.
However, he emphasized government assistance was required to make the launch of a destination successful.
“Though a tourist company may have good quality services, it will face difficulty in persuading foreign partners to promote its tours to destinations known for poor infrastructure and low quality auxiliary facilities,” he said.
Tai also said merely delivering a clear message to the world was not enough.
The message needed to be honest in order to win tourists’ confidence.
Accor Asia Pacific development manager Asia Thibaud Paquin stressed advertising a destination or introducing a brand name of Vietnam’s tourism had to be practical and truthful.
“You must ensure the beautiful things you promote about a destination are actually what that place has,” he said.
Another important factor to consider when building and managing a brand is the ability to be flexible enough to respond to a crisis.
For instance, in 2003 the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus resulted in a dramatic downturn in the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Vietnam and many other Asian countries.
Hotels and tour companies incurred heavy losses.
In the wake of the SARS epidemic, Singapore, Thailand and even Hong Kong, all badly affected by the deadly disease, changed their tourism marketing strategy and launched many tourism promotions to lure visitors back to their countries.
But Vietnam had no timely response to the health scare.
Huong said the Tourism Promotion Department was working on changing its marketing.
The department, with assistance from a group of Spanish advisers, is now mapping out a plan to advertise Vietnamese tourism until 2015.
The plan makers have completed a survey of localities and large businesses in a bid to find typical and original tourist products
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