Vietnam is set to miss its target of attracting five million international tourists this year as arrivals have dropped off sharply amid the global economic downturn, industry officials say.
Hotels and tour operators are struggling and dropping their rates amid the steepest fall in arrivals since the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis and then bird flu outbreaks scared tourists away from Vietnam and other Asian destinations.
Next year the tourism sector — which employs more than 10% of Vietnam’s workforce — faces zero growth or worse, the Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Hoang Tuan Anh warned at a recent Hanoi conference.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has asked the communist government to spend $20-million to $30-million on a global marketing campaign to draw back visitors next year and after.
VNAT said such a campaign — which would follow on from a smaller advertising campaign on CNN and the Discovery Channel — could be financed from a newly announced $1-billion economic stimulus package.
“The number of international arrivals has been down for months, but the situation has seriously worsened since October,” said Vu The Binh, a senior official at VNAT.
That month, fewer than 300 000 international visitors arrived in Vietnam, a drop of almost 12% on October last year, according to VNAT figures.
By November, arrivals were down 22% year-on-year, although part of this was due to the shutdown of Thailand’s airports by protesters.
Despite strong growth rates early in 2008, only 3,87 million tourists had come to Vietnam in the year to November, with arrivals from the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all down, the tourism ministry said.
“We forecast arrivals in 2009 will fall 20% to 30% from 2008 because of the global economic crisis,” said Binh.
“So we need to invest more in tourism products to make them return to Vietnam in late 2009 and 2010.”
Tourism operators have echoed the complaints.
“Our clients from the United States and Europe — especially France, Britain and Germany — have been down since mid-year,” said Nguyen Hang Quy of Huong Giang travel agency in the former royal capital of Hue.
“It’s because of the international downturn,” he said.
“And 2009 will be more difficult. We are now trying to seek out new markets in Asia.”
Tourism accounts for 4,5% of Vietnam’s emerging economy and had been forecast to generate $3,7-billion this year. The sector makes up 10,8% of the workforce in the country of 86 million people.
At the Hanoi conference it was reported that Vietnam could boost tourism revenues by at least 10% if it eased up visa regulations and expedited the process through online applications and visas on arrival.
The cumbersome visa application process was the “largest obstacle to establishing Vietnam as a global destination”, said a Tourism Working Group paper presented by Baron Ah Moo, the CEO of Indochina Hotels and Resorts.
“Due to the processing time … last-minute travel to Vietnam is not an option and has been replaced by weekend trips to Phuket, Bali, Macao and Singapore,” he said. — AFP