The tourism promotion season begins. Travel firms now gear up to organize promotion campaigns to attract more foreign travelers to Vietnam.

HCM City strives to receive 3.78 million foreign travelers in 2012. The 10 leading markets which had the highest numbers of tourists coming to the city by air in 2011 were the US, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, China, Malaysia, Singapore, France and Canada.

Gathering strength to expand the key markets

Doan Thi Thanh Tra, Marketing Director of Saigontourist, said that the UK, Japan, France, China and Germany would be the key markets for Saigontourist, which would be on the focus of the travel firm’s promotion campaigns.

Since the different markets have different demands and tastes, the firm would offer different tours to satisfy their demands. For example, French and German travelers may come to Vietnam under trans-Vietnam tours which last 14-18 days, while Japanese travelers come under MICE tours (meeting, incentives, conference, and exhibition).

Vietravel has found from its latest survey that India and China are the two emerging potential markets, with great potentials with the high demand for sightseeing and heritage excursion tours. Meanwhile, Russian and Brazilian favor resorts and sea traveling, and European travelers like trans-Viet tours with which they can learn about Vietnamese cultural and historical values.

Therefore, Vietravel is now participating in some events to promote tourism in India. It also targets some other big markets including South Korea and Japan. Nguyen Minh Man, Head of the Communication Division of Vietravel, said the travel firms’ representative offices in foreign countries have helped the tourism promotion a lot. Vietravel plans to open 11 more representative offices in some key markets in 2012, after it opened the offices in Cambodia, Thailand and the US.

Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai, External Affair Director of Fiditour, said that the travel firm is taking every opportunity to promote tourism at international tourism trade fairs in the UK, Russia, Germany, Japan, the US, Australia, China and regional countries namely Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. The firm is now promoting direct sales in South East Asian markets in order to attract more travelers.

Creativeness – the key to success

Nguyen Bao Anh, a senior official of the HCM City Department for Culture, Sports and Tourism, has warned that 2012 would still be a difficult year for tourism. However, the city still has set up an ambitious plan to attract 3.78 million travelers. 

Anh said that the city would target nearby key markets, such as North East Asia, ASEAN, South Asia and the Middle East, to take full advantage of the new air routes just opened by international airlines. The city would also organize FAM trips and Press trips to introduce Vietnamese tourist products and the projects calling for investment.

Travel firms have tried to design diversified tours themselves. For example, the travelers who go under the city tour can also have massage or spa service, or enjoy delicious food at the Ben Thanh night market, watch traditional art performance. 

“Going sightseeing with pedicabs is also a very interesting thing for foreigners,” an officer of Saigontourist said.

It is expected that seat-in-coach tours, which developed strongly in HCM City in 2011, would be expanded to other localities of Can Tho, Da Nang, Hue and Hoi An.

According to Fiditour, other regional countries have been very successful with their tourism promotion activities in Vietnam. Thailand, for example, is a story of success. In the past, group travelers mostly booked tours to China, while nowadays, the travelers to Thailand are accounting for the highest proportion among outbound tourists. 

Source: NLD/ VNN