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Vietnam Open Tour News & EventsTHURSDAY 16 JULY, 2009 |
 New door opens for travel sector
Do Son Beach in Hai Phong City is a popular destination for domestic tourists. Tourist joint-venture enterprises have been allowed to host outbound tours. The move is part of a stimulus policy by the Government to help overcome the effects of the world financial crisis. Under the initiative, which got the go ahead from Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung recently, travel joint-venture businesses will be permitted to run outbound tours for Vietnamese or overseas Vietnamese and foreigners working and living in Viet Nam. The policy will also allow a few four-star hotels to offer entertainment until 2am in stead of 12pm as usual on a trial basis from now until 2010. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will select a list of hotels for such trial. It will work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security to manage the implementation of the policy to prevent any violations. Referring to requests for reductions or exemptions on tax, power and telecommunications bills for hotels, Hung urged ministries and agencies to continue to follow existing regulations. The reductions were sought to help travel enterprises hardest hit in the tourism sector - and to create a level playing field between domestic and joint-venture businesses. "We always hoped for a chance to include outbound tours in our business as joint ventures have the advantage of foreign partners and a tourism network abroad," said Nguyen Van Tran, director general of APEX Viet Nam, a Vietnamese-Japanese joint-venture company. "As soon as we get guidelines from ministries and agencies, we will start organising outbound tours - hopefully this year," he said. A representative from a Vietnamese-French joint-venture company in HCM City said companies like his would now enjoy more market share. He said his company lost 30-40 per cent of trade because of the downturn in tourism caused by the global economic crisis. "However, joint-venture enterprises face competition from local businesses already involved in outbound tours," he said. "Our company needs time to organise outbound tours, which they have never done before," he said. Fewer visitors During the past six months, the number of foreign tourists to Viet Nam dropped by 19.1 per cent to 1.9 million over the corresponding period last year, according to the General Statistics Office. Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Hoang Tuan Anh attributed the drop to the global economic crisis and the outbreak of A/ H1N1 flu. Travel Department Director Vu The Binh said the Viet Nam Administration of Tourism had taken many measures to help local companies recover. This included organising tourist promotion programmes to attract more visitors. "In particular, the ministry launched the first phase of the Impression Viet Nam Programme early this year and it has yielded positive results. Domestic tourists have risen by 10-12 per cent and the total turnover of the sector increased by 3-5 per cent," he said. As part of the initiative, the ministry had offered businesses a 50 per cent reduction in value-added tax and visa exemptions for foreign tourists involved, he said. VNN/VNS
HCMC doubles promotion fund for tourism The country’s travel hub of HCMC this year will spend around VND9 billion, or US$600,000, on tourism promotion activities, twice compared to the last year’s budget, an official said.
The program will be first introduced to international visitors on the occasion of the international travel exhibition in HCMC this October. “However, most of the budget will be used for developing products instead of carrying out marketing activities only,” he said. In particular, the city this year will restart two tourism development plans. One is to develop Pham Ngu Lao Quarter in District 1 into a special tourist rendezvous for international travelers, especially backpackers, and the other is to develop river tourism. “The city’s government has approved our department’s proposal to carry out these two projects. We will spend around VND900 million on the plans,” Khanh said. Of projects to develop tourism products, the Saigon - 100 Exciting program will receive a budget of VND2.7 billion for development. The program is to introduce 100 preferred things, services and tourist destinations in the city selected from ten different sub-sectors in the hospitality industry. The program will be first introduced to international visitors on the occasion of the international travel exhibition in HCMC this October. Khanh said the international exhibition is the biggest promotion event for the inbound sector that the department was focusing on in the rest of the year. The city received only some 1.33 million international visitors in the first half and expects the total number this year to fall 10% from last year’s figure of 2.8 million. While international visitor arrivals fell in the first half, the number of domestic travelers increased impressively, and thus requires further support, he said. To attract domestic tourists to HCMC, the department will make promotion trips in Hanoi, Halong and the Mekong Delta provinces of Tien Giang and An Giang to invite guests to HCMC. VietNamNet/SGT News for Sunday 12 July, 2009 View all news for Sunday 12 July, 2009 on one page Recent News
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