Thinking that we can get high prices by 'cutting', Vietnam tourism is being 'sold cheaply'

In the first 10 months, the number of international visitors to Vietnam reached nearly 10 million.

Vietnam "sells" too poorly

Speaking at the conference, Dr. Vo Tri Thanh, Director of the Institute for Brand Strategy and Competitiveness, affirmed that the natural resources, potentials and advantages of Vietnam tourism are things that do not need to be mentioned again. However, the more people talk about the potentials, the more those who work in tourism and love tourism feel sad, even "ashamed" because those potentials have not been exploited and "priced" properly.

According to Mr. Vo Tri Thanh, tourism is the past, present and future; tourism is tradition, culture, sustainable development. This is also the most sophisticated service industry, the pinnacle of service because it touches the heart, is feeling, experiencing, understanding, discovering, enjoying and spreading. However, tourism is also a very important money-making industry, combining many other industries. With such characteristics, tourism requires a complete ecosystem with not only the participation of the entire political system but also the participation and contribution of experts from many fields such as culture, history, environment, economy, education...

From this perspective, Mr. Thanh identified three risks that the Vietnamese tourism industry is facing. First, land resources have been, are being, and will be prioritized for many large tourism projects. Without the involvement of experts in impact assessment and appraisal, we can easily fall into a situation where the urbanization of land is faster than the urbanization of production and business activities. Not to mention, sometimes under the guise of tourism development, the ultimate goal is real estate business.

The second is the issue of "bottom competition" between localities. We require tourism to be mass. People have the right to access and enjoy the country's tourism resources, but this mass tourism cannot be placed in the "bottom competition" problem, nor can it prevent or eliminate very high-quality tourism. Vietnam needs to move towards thoughtful, sophisticated but also very popular tourism.

Third is the product issue. The tourism industry talks a lot about cultural tourism, spiritual tourism, resort tourism... However, it is necessary to identify tourism products as a limitless creative horizon, like in mathematics, it will be a combination of past, present, future, economy , culture, history, festivals... Vietnam has enough materials to be able to create unique and special tourism products, combining many aspects and types, instead of just following the beaten path or relying on existing natural resources.

After identifying 3 risks for tourism to "find a way to avoid", Dr. Vo Tri Thanh commented that the sales factor is one of the weakest points of the tourism industry.

"Vietnam's sales are poor compared to Thailand. The paradox is that we overcharge, thinking we're getting a high price, but in reality the price is very cheap compared to the potential. The story of Son Doong is a typical example. Taking a photo there could earn hundreds of thousands of USD, but we let the resources be used very easily, while the additional services are overcharged. This evidence shows that we do not have a reasonable sales mindset in tourism, have not priced the potential correctly, and have not built a class for tourism potential," said Mr. Thanh.

In addition, Vietnam has not yet understood its customers and partners well. It is necessary to understand them in each segment, each market, from which to build each type of product suitable to attract them. It is necessary to set a goal to attract customers in each market, if it is not achieved, explain why and find a solution. Selling tourism needs to be more in-depth and ambitious. Promotional activities must also go into depth, have uniqueness, difference, identity, must create mystery, "desire" to attract tourists to want to come.

Delegates attending the conference at the Hanoi bridge point

In translation good connection, out of translation messy

The situation of overcharging was also one of the issues emphasized by Mr. Vu The Binh, Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, at the conference. Mr. Binh assessed that in recent times, the Government has focused on supporting tourism, with policies such as early opening, and providing very detailed and complete action plans to restore and quickly develop tourism.

In the past 10 months, the tourism industry has tried its best but there are still many things that have not been achieved. Although our visitors have increased rapidly, domestic tourism has also increased rapidly, but the speed has decreased. Importantly, revenue from domestic visitors has decreased significantly, so here we must discuss more about domestic tourism. The Covid-19 epidemic has paralyzed all tourism activities in many regions. Through the growth of the past year, perhaps we have not seen everything, do not have enough experience in how to prevent Covid-19. Therefore, as soon as we reopened, tourism started to increase rapidly, all the old situations of tourism recurred, such as overcharging, arbitrary price increases, crowded places, few places, chaos in tourism activities.

According to the Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, there are a number of reasons why growth is not as expected by the Government. Firstly, on a macro level, the connection between regions, industries, and businesses is not good. When the Covid-19 epidemic occurred, the connection was great. "We linked different types of tourism together, opened markets. Even when the Covid epidemic was tense, we still organized a conference on tourism with 450 participating businesses in January 2021, then in April 2021, there was a meeting of 700 businesses in Ninh Binh to discuss how to develop domestic tourism. At that time, everyone shared experiences, combined with each other, connected each product to create a development direction. Sadly, when the epidemic ended, those efforts and connections seemed to disappear, returning to a state of unhealthy competition, increasing prices, lowering prices, and chaos" - Mr. Binh said.

Based on the above assessment, the Vietnam Tourism Association proposed that the Government direct the sectors to focus on implementing a number of issued policies such as Resolution 08 of the Politburo; restructuring the international market, promoting tourism promotion; promoting new tourism products, supporting training of tourism human resources; innovating the activities of the Tourism Development Support Fund...

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