The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) launched a new online tourism website, vietnamtourism.vn, earlier this month at the World Travel Market in London as a portal of travel inspiration for foreign visitors.
The website was spearheaded by the Tourism Advisory Board (TAB), whose members include Saigon Tourist, Thien Minh Group, Exo Travel and Accor Hotels & Resorts. The non-profit organisation’s core mission is to increase Vietnam’s competitiveness as a tourism destination by marketing the country internationally.
According to Hawkins Pham, TAB’s general director, TAB is giving emphasis to the digital channel because “70 per cent of travellers use online resources to research and book travel”.
The site is currently only available in English, but will be expanded to include other languages. TAB is also looking into integrating booking or transactional functions, and other features.
Pham said: “We are targeting high-yield leisure visitors with a focus on western markets. Our goal is to grow annual visitors to the official tourism website threefold to nine million by 2018.”
Tran Bia Bach, general manager of Buffalo Tours, believes this digitalisation effort is a step in the right direction for a country that’s lacking destination promotion efforts. “We hope to see more initiatives and refreshing approaches such as this from the government body,” he added.
However, Bach also urged an increased budget for marketing and destination marketing and a system to measure accountability, performance and results.
