Travel activities play a pioneering role, acting as a driving force to promote tourism.

As the link connecting tourists and destinations, travel agencies also play an important role in designing, coordinating, ensuring product quality and creating motivation to promote tourism. When the consumption trends of tourists are changing dramatically, travel agencies need to play a pioneering role.

Tourists experience Pu Luong, Thanh Hoa . (Photo: QUANG THANG)

Enhancing the value of destinations

Many years ago, the cave system in Phong Nha-Ke Bang was not much interested by tourists, but since Oxalis Company launched Son Doong expedition tours or Hang En trekking tours,... this place has become an explosive destination for adventure tourism and cave tourism.

Mu Cang Chai is the same. The place owns beautiful terraced fields but was previously just a small stopover. Only when the tours to hunt for the golden season combined with learning about local culture were strongly deployed by travel agencies, did Mu Cang Chai truly become a "magnet" attracting tourists. Similarly, the Hoa Lo Prison relic site ( Hanoi ) had a breakthrough growth in the number of visitors after "collaborating" with travel agencies to form special night tours...

Notably, not only building products combined with promotion and market connection, travel agencies also play a leading role in tourism consumption trends. For example, putting into operation green tours, no plastic waste, respecting local cultural identity, is how travel agencies are shaping the trend of environmentally and socially responsible tourism.

According to the Vietnam Tourism Association, as of November 2025, Vietnam has 4,775 international travel agencies and 2,150 domestic travel agencies, with about 150,000 direct workers. Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association Vu The Binh commented that although only accounting for about 10% of direct workers in the tourism industry, with its dynamism and inclusiveness, travel agencies are the pioneers creating momentum for the entire industry.

That is also the reason why many experts believe that to develop Vietnamese tourism quickly and sustainably in the new era, we must start by promoting the pioneering role of travel agencies in innovation.

Change thinking and action

Tourists increasingly prefer to learn, book services and travel on their own. According to Deputy Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism Ha Van Sieu, travel businesses must change their business thinking, product models and customer approach, shifting from providing traditional tours to providing value, designing in-depth experiences, providing services that tourists cannot do themselves or cannot do well. This is the space for travel businesses to create new competitive advantages.

Businesses can develop flexible modular packages, allowing customers to choose each component according to their needs, from accommodation, transportation, local experiences, tour guides... to providing necessary services in specific tourism activities such as trekking, culinary tourism, rural tourism...

Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Director of the Institute of Tourism Economics, commented that the explosion of online tourism platforms, the obsolescence of the traditional tour sales model and the need for sustainable and responsible tourism experiences are posing internal challenges and exposing the gap between business capacity and customer needs.

These are the limitations in digital capacity when most travel businesses only stop at digitizing information but have not yet reached strategic digital transformation; the barriers in capital and human resources to invest in necessary customer data management systems; the difficulty in green supply capacity leading to the inability to deploy high-end products. We must find ways to overcome these bottlenecks if we want to adapt to new consumer behavior.

Travel businesses need to reposition their roles, become valuable advisors in the digital and sustainable era; invest in customer data management systems and digital platforms to regain initiative in approaching tourists; and especially specialize products by focusing on developing exclusive, highly sustainable experiential products, such as culinary tours, adventure tours, storytelling heritage tours, etc.

Recently, the first Vietnam Travel Day 2025 was held in Quang Ninh, gathering more than 400 domestic travel and tourism service businesses, along with nearly 120 international buyers from China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, India...

From the actual operation of the enterprise, Mr. Pham Ha, Chairman of Lux Group, affirmed that the sustainable direction, creating strong motivation for the development of tourism as well as competitive advantage for Vietnam tourism is to focus on cultural tourism. When tourism is no longer simply about seeing-taking-passing, but a journey of learning-understanding-connecting-feeling, Vietnam tourism cannot compete by price but must compete by cultural identity and genuine experiences.

This is a direction that helps increase spending, length of stay, tourists' emotions and enhance national soft power, requiring travel businesses to identify culture as an input driving force for tourism economic development.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Vietnam Green Tourism Association Phung Quang Thang especially emphasized the requirement for travel businesses to pioneer in changing both their thinking and operating methods towards green...

Recently, the first Vietnam Travel Day 2025 was held in Quang Ninh, gathering more than 400 domestic travel and tourism service businesses, along with nearly 120 international buyers from China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, India...

TRANG ANH

Source: https://nhandan.vn/hoat-dong-lu-hanh-phat-huy-vai-tro-tien-phong-lam-dong-luc-thuc-day-du-lich-post927842.html