Linking up to attract cross-border trade customers.

Cambodia is a market with great potential.

Recently, a delegation from the Department of Industry and Trade and the People's Committee of Tan Bien District, Tay Ninh Province, in coordination with relevant agencies of Tboung Khmum Province (Cambodia), conducted a survey of the model border market between the two countries (Da Market, Tboung Khmum Province) to discuss solutions to boost business and tourism .

During the survey, representatives of the Tay Ninh Young Entrepreneurs Association proposed organizing a trade fair during the Chol Chnam Thmay New Year festival of their neighboring country, and also suggested researching the possibility of establishing a stopover point for sightseeing and shopping within the tourism chain to Tay Ninh and Tboung Khmum. In particular, given the booming tourism in Tay Ninh, their counterparts also proposed establishing a tourist route from Memot District (Thbong Khmum) to Ba Den Mountain and vice versa.

Vietnam has great potential for developing tourism in border regions.

Previously, shortly after Vietnam fully opened its doors to tourism, the Tay Ninh Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism also organized a program to promote and expand Tay Ninh's tourism market with provinces and cities with developed tourism in the Kingdom of Cambodia, such as Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.

Responding to Thanh Nien newspaper, a representative from the Tay Ninh Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism stated that as a province bordering Cambodia, with two international border gates and more than a dozen sub-border gates, Tay Ninh possesses many advantages to attract tourists from Cambodia. Convenient and easy transportation provides businesses with ample opportunities to develop tour programs of suitable duration.

Besides its advantageous geographical location, the province also boasts unique products favored by Cambodian tourists, such as exploring the Southern National Liberation Front Base, the Central Committee of the Southern Region, and many other cultural relics like the Cao Dai Holy See, Chop Mat Tower, Ba Den Mountain, Dau Tieng Lake, and Lo Go - Xa Mat National Park, characteristic of seasonal wetlands. Recently, the province has also attracted several large investors to build high-class, innovative man-made tourism products. These are significant potentials for Tay Ninh to develop almost all types of tourism, from traditional and cultural tourism, ecological tourism, resort tourism, spiritual tourism, to scientific research tourism.

If we can implement the idea of ​​a trans-Indochina visa, trans-Indochina tourism, open visas, and open borders with Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, we can not only attract tourists from the Laotian, Cambodian, and Thai markets but also tap into many more international tourist flows that they bring in.

Dr. Luong Hoai Nam

"The distance from Tay Ninh to Ho Chi Minh City, the country's leading tourist center, is about 100 km. This distance is a significant disadvantage affecting the attraction of tourists to Tay Ninh. The province's tourism industry faces intense competition from the attractions of other localities in the region. Therefore, in recent times, in addition to the domestic market, the province has been focusing on developing international tourists, especially those from Cambodia. With an attractive new product system, along with the planned Ho Chi Minh City - Moc Bai expressway currently being implemented, we expect Tay Ninh to not only be a breakthrough destination in the near future but also a potential transit point connecting tourists from Cambodia to provinces in the Southeast region as well as throughout the country," a representative of the Tay Ninh Provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism stated.

Similar to Tay Ninh, Quang Ninh province has also been fully exploiting its 132 km border with Guangxi province (China), with three border gates: Mong Cai, Hoanh Mo, and Bac Phong Sinh, to boost the attraction of Chinese tourists traveling by land. According to Pham Ngoc Thuy, Director of the Quang Ninh Provincial Department of Tourism, in recent years, Quang Ninh province ( Vietnam ) and Guangxi province (China) have developed comprehensive cooperation and exchange in many aspects, including tourism. This is the largest international tourist market for the whole country and for Quang Ninh.

Unlocking the potential of cross-border tourism.

Having pursued the development of road tourism for many years, Mr. Ly Viet Cuong, General Director of Nam Phuong Tourism Company, believes that Cambodian, Laotian, and northern Thai tourists once flocked to Vietnam . However, their needs at that time were mainly for medical treatment, and their spending was very low, so these were not attractive markets for the tourism industry to "invest in."

Even in the post-pandemic period, if the tourism industry wanted to recover quickly, it would only focus its efforts on air travel markets. Overland tourism products, such as bringing Cambodian tourists from Tay Ninh to Ho Chi Minh City or Da Lat, or welcoming Cambodian tourists through the Da Nang border gate, if they existed at all, were merely "reusing old products"; they were still usable, but not attractive.

Mr. Ly Viet Cuong believes that the tourism needs of Cambodians and Laotians have changed significantly. They want to visit more places, and their spending has improved considerably. The tourism industry also needs to change its approach to attract these markets. "Cambodian tourists like to go to Da Lat for its mountains, like to go to Ho Chi Minh City for medical treatment, and also travel through the Moc Bai border gate to Tay Ninh - a newly emerging spiritual tourism destination. Why don't we cooperate to create well-structured tourism products, so that tourists have a clear route and stay for longer periods?", Mr. Cuong suggested.

Sharing the view that Vietnam's tourism sector has neglected the overland traveler market in recent years, Dr. Luong Hoai Nam, a member of the Tourism Advisory Board (TAB), acknowledged that even TAB has limited data and research on this group of tourists. The main reason is the lack of policies to open up border crossings between countries, thus failing to fully exploit the potential of cross-border trade tourists.

"In reality, we haven't failed to see the potential. Previously, Vietnam has repeatedly mentioned the idea of ​​'one visa - multiple destinations' in the CLMV sub-region (Cambodia - Laos - Myanmar - Vietnam ), but it has been a futile effort, a call to action that was then abandoned. If border crossings are opened freely, allowing people and tourists to travel between countries without visas, and vehicles from our side can easily cross into theirs, then overland tourism will develop strongly, especially for individual and family travelers," emphasized Dr. Luong Hoai Nam.

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