One tourism product per province

Mr. Nguyen Van Hung, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam had just assigned the Ministry to urgently issue guidelines on safe adaptive tourism to form a basis for a synchronous implementation nationwide, not just in each locality.

 “Through the survey, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is recommending the provinces and cities to create tourism products to meet the changing needs and tastes of the tourists, follow small, safe package tour models; lay great emphasis on tours to historical monuments, tourist attractions, and beautiful spots”, said Minister Nguyen Van Hung.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on the economy and society not only domestically but also globally. Up to this point, Vietnam has a good signal when the pandemic is gradually controlled and pushed back.

 “In the year of 2020 and nine months of 2021, tourism suffered tremendous losses. Some people say that tourism has “bottomed out”, some say that tourism has returned to zero, others say that tourism is dismal and difficult to recover. Any of these approaches is suitable for the current situation, but more importantly, we have to find the root cause of the problem, considering both subjective and objective factors. Based on the survey, the numbers show that our tourism has been difficult and even more difficult. In 2020, the number of international tourists coming to our country decreased by 80%, but previously thanks to that number of international visitors, Vietnam's tourism ranked in the top tourism destinations of Asia. In 2021, the number of international tourist arrivals decreased considerably by 90%. Regarding domestic tourists, in 2020, Vietnam had 85 million visitors, but since 2021, our domestic tourism has almost frozen,” said Mr. Nguyen Van Hung.

Tourist accommodation establishments also encounter many difficulties. Usually, accommodation establishments account for 46-50% of tourism revenue, but now 90% of these places have to close because there are no guests, leading to no operation in most of their rooms, and only 10% of their hotel capacity can be used.

Jobs in the tourism industry have been disrupted due to the lack of visitors, so these tourism establishments have been forced to downsize their workforce and implement distancing measures, causing the workers to be unemployed. The number of businesses that have to withdraw their business licenses and request to stop operating is constantly increasing. Currently, there are only a few businesses remaining secure, keeping their brand names to wait for recovery.

“The data helps us to have this opinion, which is consistent with the general international judgment. Therefore, we must adapt to new conditions. We should study forecasts to take the right direction,” said Minister Nguyen Van Hung.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is assigned by the Government the responsibility of advising and coordinating with ministries and sectors to develop a plan to recover the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic. “In which, tourism - service sector is the second priority after finance and credit. Therefore, we have continued to research and proposed key mechanisms suitable for Vietnam's economic conditions, suitable for supporting localities and businesses to recover and develop tourism”, Minister Nguyen Van Hung added.

In this group of tasks, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has recently proposed and the Government, the National Assembly have approved the reduction of electricity bills in accommodation establishments, which has been applied for a long time; Provide support to tour guides, give allowances for their difficulties when they suffer from the pandemic impact; Formulate proposals to reduce travel deposit for travel and tourism businesses. This travel deposit is revised according to Decree 168 to reduce 80% to resolve difficulties for businesses.

However, our country's resources are scarce. Understanding the general situation in the world, the fiscal and credit policy are put in the top priority to carry out the recovery task. Vietnam is no exception. Therefore, the Government assigned the Ministry of Finance and the banking sector to propose credit and support policies. Accordingly, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism also proposed to consider a credit package for businesses in general, including tourism businesses.

“When the Government promulgates that policy, tourism businesses will know how to live within their means, how to borrow, and how much to borrow in order to recover. Therefore, there should be policies and methods for each business”, Minister Nguyen Van Hung commented.

In addition, tourism units must focus on solving the difficulties they are facing, which is support policies for their employees so as not to disrupt their workforce. This is a mandatory requirement because the tourism workforce is specific and specialized, trained, and issued with practicing certificates. This workforce has begun to quit their jobs and move on to other jobs.

“When the market reopened, the tourism industry resumed, there was a part of the tourism employees returning to work, but there was also a part that had turned to other jobs and had no intention of going back to work in tourism. How will this shortfall be made up? We are proposing to the Government and the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs to have policies to support, train and create jobs again so as not to have labor disruptions in tourism businesses”, suggested Minister Nguyen Van Hung.

According to Minister Nguyen Van Hung, in the field of management and direction, it is necessary to focus on researching and selecting a number of main jobs and especially orientation for transformation. The COVID-19 pandemic is not only an economic impact but also a psychological, emotional, and aspirational impact.

Through the preliminary survey, the psychology of tourists has changed. If in the past, tourists went in large groups and large tours, now they go in small groups and families. The Ministry is asking provinces and cities to try to renew and localize tourism products in accordance with the goal that a province must have one typical tourism product and connect safely for tourists to choose their tourism products. Products must meet the needs and tastes of the visitors after the pandemic, small groups, safe tourism, package tours; towards historical monuments and landmarks.

First, domestic and provincial tourism

In this difficult situation, Mr. Nguyen Trung Khanh, General Director of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, said: The General Department of Tourism is researching, proposing, and coordinating with businesses, business associations, and localities to grasp the situation to promptly advise the leadership of the Ministry, and submit to the Prime Minister, Ministries and units to remove difficulties and obstacles.

In addition, the General Department actively researched and advised the leaders of the Ministry to pilot welcoming the international tourists to Phu Quoc island, coordinating with localities to discuss solutions to restore domestic tourism activities.

The immediate recovery of tourism is firstly provincial tourism of localities that have controlled the epidemic, proceeding to welcome visitors from other provinces after the epidemic is under control. And there are also specific criteria to welcome international tourists after evaluating the result of the pilot implementation of welcoming international tourists to Phu Quoc.

The Golden Bridge - Da Nang City has implemented many solutions to soon restore tourism activities. Photo: VNA

The General Department of Tourism proposed the Government and Ministries and units to solve and remove difficulties for the tourism industry, businesses and employees in three groups.

The first group is fiscal policy, related to preferential credit policies for businesses to get preferential loans to deal with difficulties, pay salaries to employees, to attract employees to stay with businesses so that businesses will have funds to create new products to adapt to the new environment.

The second group is financial policy, which the General Department of Tourism proposed to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to reduce taxes, fees and charges. This will help businesses to reduce the burden to overcome this difficult period.

The third group is the social security package. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has given the advice to support businesses in the sector, especially tour guides who have recently received financial support. Businesses and employees also need greater attention from the Government.

The General Department of Tourism also proposed to extend the time reducing electricity bills for business establishments to 2022, even to 2023. Reduce land rental fees for tourism businesses.

From the perspective of tourism businesses, Ms. Nguyen Le Huong, Deputy General Director of Vietravel said: “Regarding macro policies, it is necessary to unify and synchronize general macro policies throughout the country. It is a prerequisite for tourism to recover. If there are no overall solutions and each locality has its own policy, it is clear that the implementation will be very difficult”.

The ripe rice season in Trung Khanh attracts tourists to Cao Bang. Photo: VNA

In Resolution 128, vaccines are also mentioned and this is a prerequisite. Therefore, appropriate authorities must re-evaluate the vaccine rate in all localities to come up with policies and vaccine maps of the whole region, which is a very important condition for residents and visitors to feel safe and peaceful in the region.

“Only when the vaccine is injected, and the arrivals and departures are safe, will people return to tourism. That is the macro policy to help restore the economy. As for all efforts of businesses and suppliers, it is also impossible to stimulate tourism if we do not have this prerequisite. Currently, safety is the number one priority, but now there are also many administrative procedures between localities”, said Ms. Nguyen Le Huong.

“The international travel section says that it’s too early, but obviously we still have flights to and from other countries. We have people coming back to Vietnam, many experts want to travel but they cannot, because our current policies have not been applied to travel yet. Therefore, we also want the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the General Department to have macro policies and messages on communication because our flights are applying for permits and many permits are difficult for them to access. We should start from those flights to develop tourism, from which we can soon open commercial airline routes and soon have an assessment of international routes and flights of other units in the ASEAN region as well as international airlines to have early orientation. From there, businesses and suppliers have plans to deploy activities,” suggested Ms. Nguyen Le Huong.

As the leading travel agency in Vietnam, in 2021, Vietravel only achieved 10% revenue in the first 7 months of the year. 5 months left from May 11 to October 30, most of the revenue is 0. The number of employees currently working is only 3-5%. Therefore, there is a need for specific support for the tourism industry to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Vu The Binh, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, said that the proposed plans need a long time to complete because some regulations might not really adapt to the situation in the near future. However, Vietnam needs to clearly define the attitude of always being ready to adapt. Therefore, the Government's Resolution 128 promotes provisional regulations on safe, flexible adaptation to and effective control of the COVID-19 pandemic. This clearly shows that Vietnam is gradually approaching the actual conditions.