China 'quickly' attracts Vietnamese tourists

Just opened and attracted Vietnamese customers

"The biggest food festival of the year is back, taking place from March 14 to 28. Let's take a food tour to Hekou with your best friend to discover the richness of Chinese cuisine right away!" - Facebook account named "Little Sheep" shared on the group "Check in Vietnam" with more than 2.3 million members. Along with that is an album of photos of young people happily experiencing extremely attractive dishes at the Hekou food festival - China.

Young Vietnamese people are inviting each other to 'check-in' Hekou - China

Hekou Town (Yunnan Province), located close to the border between the two countries, is separated from Lao Cai City by the Nam Thi River. After immigration activities at the border gates between Vietnam and China were restored from January 8, Vietnamese tourists immediately went abroad to this town to travel because visitors to Hekou do not need a visa or passport, just a travel book.

On the same day that the biggest food festival of the year was officially held in Hekou, China announced that it would reissue almost all types of visas to foreigners starting from March 15, including tourist visas, taking another important step in the process of eliminating the "zero Covid" policy.

Immediately, many localities have issued breakthrough policies to attract international visitors to China. For example, Hainan province exempted visas for 59 countries to attract tourists and shoppers. Guangdong exempted visas for foreigners entering mainland China from Hong Kong and Macau; Guilin city, Guangxi province also has a visa exemption policy for 52 countries... Tourist areas have also made efforts to create many unique tourism products and new experiences to welcome visitors after 3 years of separation.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Ky, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Vietravel Corporation, revealed that as soon as the Government of this country decided to fully open tourism, the Chinese tourism "giant" Ctrip approached Vietravel, expressing its desire to cooperate with the leading travel company in Vietnam. Notably, not only did they want to "join hands" to bring Chinese tourists to Vietnam, they also suggested that Vietravel bring Vietnamese tourists to China for tourism, and at the same time, there were many moves to directly approach the leaders of the Vietnamese tourism industry to market and launch the market.

"That shows that not only Vietnam is expecting Chinese tourists, but they are also immediately looking at our market and have made very quick and drastic moves," said Mr. Ky.

Chinese tourists in the first group to travel to Vietnam after the Covid-19 epidemic

Vietnam will fall behind if not fast

On the other hand, yesterday (March 15), on the first day China officially opened group tours to Vietnam, the first 124 Chinese tourists organized by travel companies entered our country at Huu Nghi International Border Gate, Lang Son Province. It is expected that after entering at Huu Nghi Border Gate, the 124 tourists will have 4 days to experience tourist attractions in Hanoi and Ha Long. On the same day, Quang Ninh welcomed a group of 150 Chinese tourists entering through Mong Cai Border Gate.

Across the country, the system of hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues is also ready to welcome "regular customers" back. However, apart from the readiness and thoughtfulness to welcome customers back naturally from the efforts to connect with travel companies, the Vietnamese tourism industry has yet to have any specific program to welcome Chinese guests. Entry and visa procedures are "silent", so businesses are still passively "taking risks" to do it themselves as before. The product and destination systems are always affirmed by the provinces to have been renewed and changed, but how new and to what extent, no one knows.

We talk a lot about digital transformation but we don't have a national digital map of tourism yet. Vietnam needs to do this soon, which shows all tourism resources, all tourist destinations, services, festivals, events... This will be an important information channel serving the promotion, communication and marketing of Vietnam tourism.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Ky, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Vietravel Corporation

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Ky assessed that this is a very clear manifestation of the weakness in the promotion and advertising of Vietnamese tourism. Not only for the Chinese market but also for all sources of visitors, since the opening up until now, the ability to access, market and make the market of Vietnamese tourism has been very weak. There is still no national program to promote Vietnamese destinations. Most of the promotion programs are carried out by tourism and aviation businesses themselves, so it is difficult to achieve high efficiency.

"Vietnam's visa policy is inferior to other countries. We do not have tourism promotion offices abroad - that is a big disadvantage. The cost of promoting and advertising Vietnam's tourism is also many times lower than other countries. Vietnam's airfare and land tour prices are always 30% higher than those of other countries in the region. Not to mention, we want to make a breakthrough in tourism but have not yet issued any specific policies to support tourism businesses to recover, let alone make a breakthrough. All of these factors are the reasons why Vietnam's tourism is lagging behind. If drastic policies are not quickly adopted, Vietnam's tourism will increasingly fall behind," Mr. Nguyen Quoc Ky warned.

Mr. Nguyen Chau A, General Director of Oxalis Adventure Company, also commented that marketing and communication have always been the weakest points of Vietnamese tourism. For example, Son Doong Cave is one of the most magnificent caves in the world, but if you ask 10 Singaporeans, all 10 of them say they don't know. For a long time, Vietnam has mainly "reliant" on foreign partners to "help" with the communication. About 80% of international visitors to Vietnam are brought back by foreign companies.

“No matter how beautiful we are, how new our products are, how open we are, if visitors do not know about them, they will not come. Vietnamese tourism needs systematic, professional, long-term and continuous investment to be able to take advantage of its competitive advantages and recover quickly. In recent times, large enterprises have done many very good destination promotion programs, such as the Golden Bridge in Ba Na Hill, which is very famous due to investment in destination marketing combined with partners bringing visitors to Vietnam. Based on such successes, the General Department of Tourism needs to have more extensive tourism product promotion programs so that visitors are aware of the destination,” Mr. Chau A suggested.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/trung-quoc-da-nhanh-chan-hut-du-khach-viet-185230316131702221.htm