How to draw foreign tourists back to Vietnam

“Vietnam has many fascinating things to discover, but it’s the best if you discover them yourself.”

Lorijon Bacchi, country manager of Visa in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, said: “tripadviser.com, a prestigious travel guide website in the world, recommends to its readers that the best way to travel Vietnam is to hire a bike and ride it from the North to the South. It is, on the surface, very strange advice!”

“Coming to Vietnam, I know local tour guides’ joke about going to museums in the morning and the water puppetry theatre in the evening, so I understand the above advice. Vietnam has many fascinating things to discover. But it’s best that you discover them yourself.”

In 2011, Visa implemented its sixth global travel trends survey and this was the third time Vietnam was involved.

Attractive destination

According to the survey, with distinctive culture, beautiful natural landscapes and affordability, Vietnam emerged as one of the top destinations for travellers from Singapore, Thailand, Australia and the Republic of Korea.

Forecasts on the nation's tourism sector for the year ahead predict that 24 percent of inbound travellers to Vietnam will be from Singapore and Thailand (12 percent from each country), followed by Australian visitors accounting for 10 percent. The survey also highlighted a growing number of tourists from the Republic of Korea.

Natural scenery, good deals and promotions, as well as political stability, were cited as key factors for visiting Vietnam over the next two years. While in Vietnam, future inbound travellers surveyed about their travel plans said they planned to enjoy outdoor activities, take food tours to explore the local cuisine, and experience the local night life.

Lorijon Bacchi said that with tourism emerging as one of Vietnam's key economic drivers, the survey results came at an ideal time to show where visitors to Vietnam would be coming from and what would motivate them to choose destinations.

"Using data from the Visa Global Travel Intentions Survey 2011, the Vietnamese tourism industry can now identify opportunities to attract more tourists based specifically on inbound traveller preferences,” said Bacchi.

The Visa survey quizzed over 11,000 travellers across 23 countries about their travel plans and preferences over the coming years. Interestingly, a large number of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay a premium for food (64 percent), and wanted to visit exotic destinations (65 percent) and experience the local culture (63 percent). Similarly, variety of food and dining options and lower travel costs were also cited as key reasons for future inbound travel decisions.

Bacchi said most inbound travellers to Vietnam had already travelled to popular Asian destination Hong Kong. Many had also already visited nearby Asian destinations such as mainland China and Malaysia.

Vietnam was likely to have mostly new visitors, who had not visited the country before. While the variety of food offered was the key reason for past inbound travellers, future inbound travellers would revisit the country for its low travel costs. Beautiful natural scenery attracted both past and future inbound travellers.

Poor advertising

Analysing the survey, experts noted that Vietnam’s tourism advertising is ineffective.

Of the total 11,620 travellers who participated in the survey, only 271 visited Vietnam in the last two years and 338 planned to visit the country in the next two years. Singapore, Thailand, Australia and the Republic of Korea are the countries that have the highest number of tourists interested in Vietnam. This means that Vietnam tourism promotion in countries outside the region was limited.

In Visa’s survey results, there is an unexpected aspect: several foreign tourists thought that political instability and the risk of terrorism in Vietnam were higher than the world average.

Nguyen Quy Phuong, chief of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism’s Travel Department, said: “This misunderstanding is firstly caused by ourselves because we did not do advertising activities well. When Cambodia had a little instability, some visitors thought that Vietnam was also unsafe and avoided choosing Vietnam as their destination. Though these people account for a small portion, we need to immediately deal with it by providing tourists with accurate information.”

Bad service

At the workshop where Visa made public its survey, Bacchi told her story, as a simple tourist: “The first time I was in Hanoi, I hired a tour guide. Frankly, I was bored after a day. I told the guide that I had only three days in Hanoi and I wanted to have a comfortable and enjoyable time. But it sounded like he could only introduce a model Hanoi to me, while I felt there was a very interesting Hanoi somewhere that I could not touch. The guide, although young and speaking English well, did not know how to do this for me. So I did not hire him anymore; I opened my guide book and wandered around Hanoi alone.”

“In my later trips to Hanoi, I was always eager because I planned to taste the local cuisine and to shop somewhere - and I discovered all of these places by myself.”

Bacchi’s story is not exceptional. She still returns to Vietnam but how many foreign tourists with the same experience have not come back to Vietnam?