Vietnam still doesn’t know how to spend money on tourism promotion — TalkVietnam

Vietnam still doesn’t know how to spend money on tourism promotion

Posted on APRIL 10, 2013 Written by VIETNAMNET LEAVE A COMMENT

VietNamNet Bridge – Surveys have found out that 70-80 percent of foreigners traveled to Vietnam after they heard about the trips to Vietnam from relatives or friends, not because they got the information about Vietnam when they attended tourism trade fairs or roadshows, or seeing ads on CNN or BBC.

A senior executive of Trong Diem Trade and Tourism Company, which were present at the last 10 trade fairs in Berlin (ITB) has attributed this to the unprofessional and unmethodical advertisement campaigns carried out by Vietnam.

The number of German tourists to Vietnam in the first three months of the year dropped dramatically by 51.7 percent in comparison with the same period of 2012, even though Germany has been one of the key markets, where Vietnam regularly runs tourism promotion campaigns. Especially, the Germany – Vietnam direct flights allow travelers to take trips in a convenient and time-saving way.

The above senior executive said the ITB’s organization board offered free admissionto local people on the two last days of the trade fair, which attracted a very high number of visitors.

While it was very crowded and noisy at the other stalls, the Vietnamese stall was so quiet because many directors of travel firms left for Vietnam on the last two days.

The director of a travel firm that left before the closing ceremony said that he came there just to meet foreign partners, and he did this on the first days of the trade fair already. He did not think he needed to stay there for some more days, because Vietnam did not organize any special events to attract individual tourists.

Another director complained about the irresponsible preparation of the Vietnamese agencies for the trade fair. ITB opened on March 5, but travel firms were gathered just some days in advance, which forced them to make preparations in a hurry. Especially, the stall’s layout of the Vietnamese stall shown to travel firms was quite different from the one used at the trade fair.

Where to spend money on?

Vietnam, a poor country, once accepted to pay $300,000 to advertise Vietnam’s tourism on CNN in 2007, and $400,000 to post ad pieces on BBC, CNN, and on 27 taxis in London in July 2009. However, no one can say for sure about the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

In 2012, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, once again, intended to spend big money to post ad pieces on 32 buses in Australia for one month. Travel firms then immediately criticized the plan, saying they could not understand what the ministry strived for when running the program.

A report by Nielsen, a market survey firm, showed that more and more tourists access Internet to seek tourism information. About 61 percent of tourists nowadays seek information about the destination points before or when they begin the trips, while 48 percent discuss about trips on online forums. The advertisement on TVand radio ranks nearly at the bottom of the list of the main channels tourists use to seek information.

Director of the Malaysian Tourism Promotion Agency–Victor Wee, has advised Vietnam not to scatter money everywhere, but focus on some key programs to attract tourists.

He himself admitted that he doesn’t like watching TV. Malaysia once relied too much on TV ads, while did not make appropriate attention to Internet, which turns out to be a very effective and cheap advertisement channel

Doubts raised about plan to advertise on BBC

Right after the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) announced their plan to advertise Vietnam’s tourism on BBC World and taxis in the UK, a lot of travel firms and hotels have doubts about the feasibility of the plan.

Is it feasible?

In fact, the idea of advertising on the BBC was approved by the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) last year. However, at that time, many travel firms voiced concern over the feasibility of the plan. The travel firms wanted to know if MCST thoroughly considered the main audience of the channel and if the travelers watched this channel for tourism information.

According to Nguyen Quoc Ky, Director of Vietravel, it is necessary to set up advertisement plans based on thorough analysis. It is also necessary to know what the key markets are for Vietnam and how high the tourism demand is in the markets.

Meanwhile, Baron Ah Moo, CEO of Indochina Land’s Hotels and Resorts, said that BBC is really a famous politics and economics TV channel, but the main audience of the channel is businessmen.

The businessmen watch BBC in order to get information about political situations, labor markets and investment policies in countries. Therefore, tourism advertisement pieces will not catch the attention from audience, even if they are broadcasted on BBC World.

Luu Duc Ke, Director of Hanoitourist, related that when he asked a Spanish senior marketing expert about the efficiency of tourism advertisement pieces on CNN and BBC, he said that the audience absolutely does not expect to get tourism information on CNN and BBC. The marketing expert said that it would be better to advertise on Discovery or Geographic, which specializes in tourism.

Mr. Baron Ah Moo said that Vietnam needs to thoroughly consider the taste of travelers, listen to advisors and travel firms in order to build up specific advertisement programs for different markets.

The argument of state management agencies

An official from the Culture, Sports and Tourism Centre, who asked to not be named, said that there are three factors for which the International Cooperation Department under MCST decided to advertise on BBC.

BBC is a channel shown worldwide, including Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. BBC is broadcasted in 200 countries and territories. Statistics showed that 276 million families watch BBC and the channel is viewed in 1.5 million hotel rooms worldwide. In Japan, for example, hotel rooms do not have CNN, but have BBC.
Moreover, BBC has good experience in advertising tourism as it has done this for more than 40 nations, including the big tourism countries like Australia, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
The noteworthy thing is that the mode BBC offers to Vietnam proves to be very reasonable. BBC has offered to send a delegation to Vietnam to make a video clip which will be broadcasted on BBC. The total expenses prove to be reasonable, $204,600.

Regarding the main audience of BBC, the official said that at first, Vietnam needs to advertise its national image, so that travelers can have a good impression of the country, and then it needs to advertise tours. The more people the information can reach, the better for Vietnam’s tourism, no matter who the people are.

“It is quite good to aim to businessmen, and it is also good to target popular travelers. Tourists not only watch tourism channels, they also watch other channels, especially news channels.”

“In the global economic crisis, tourists tend to travel to near-by countries. Therefore, Asia Pacific should be the choice. Europe has always been one of the key markets for Vietnam. Meanwhile, North America has always been a big market,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ky thinks that there are four markets Vietnam needs to target on, East Asia, North East Asia (Japan, China and South Korea), ASEAN and inner-region, Australia (which bears less financial crisis’ impacts than Europe and US), and cruise tourism.

Vietnam not keen on advertisement

Pham Hoang Tuan, Deputy Head of the Tourism Promotion Division under Vietnamtourism in Hanoi, said that Vietnam is still not keen on advertisement, pricing and offering tourism products.

Having returned from ITB (in Germany) and MITT (in Russia) trade fairs, Dang Bao Hieu, Director of Focus Travel, said that he was disappointed when seeing that the publications advertising ‘Impressive Vietnam’ were very poor.

Ky from Vietravel said that state management agencies should have overall advertisement campaigns which aim for long-term development, rather than short-term ones.

“I cannot see any bandmaster, who takes the responsibility for promotion tourism at the national level,” said director of a travel firm.

In April, the International Cooperation Agency under the VNAT will kick off the advertisement plan. It remains unclear about the broadcasting time. However, in general, there are two main tourism seasons, in June-July and September-October. Therefore, the advertisement pieces will appear in June 2009 at the soonest.
Ha Yen

Vietnam’s image to be promoted on BBC

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MoCST) has approved the Vietnam National Tourism Administration’s project to promote Vietnam's image on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The ministry also assigned its International Cooperation Department to conduct negotiations with other TV channels such as France’s Fashion TV, the Republic of Korea’s Ariang and the US’s Discovery channel and to explore the possibility of running advertisements on Japan’s NHK and China’s CCTV channels, as well as in a popular Russian newspaper. MoCST Minister Hoang Tuan Anh also directed the administration to consider re-broadcasting a trailer on Vietnam on CNN and organising roadshows in Australia, Taiwan and China. The advertisement campaign is part of the national trade-investment and tourism promotion programme which was adopted by the Government with a total capital of VND30 billion. According to an official from Ben Thanh Tourist – a large travel agency in Vietnam - the Vietnam National Tourism Administration spent VND4.7 billion promoting the national image on CNN Asia. However, the programme did not meet the expectations as few Asian people watched the channel to book tours, while none in Europe and America could watch it.
(Source: VOV)