Shoestring budget slows Vietnam’s tourism

HANOI Vietnam National Administration of Tourism says a shoestring budget is hampering tourism promotion campaigns and ultimately reducing the country’s ability to grow tourist arrivals.
VNAT Chief, Nguyen Van Tuan, told local media that the tight budget handed to his agency to promote tourism was used for different activities so channelling more funds to promotions was difficult.
Vietnam generates around USD700 million in tourism revenue a year, but funds for actual promotions are minimal, well below its neighbours and insufficient to support industry growth, he said.
“It’s hard to launch campaigns with such a modest budget…Vietnam is even lagging behind Cambodia, which has a quite young tourist industry.”
inside no 1The chief added: “Cambodia has a very professional tourism industry and Vietnam is way behind Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.”
The entire spend on promoting tourism does not exceed USD2.5 million compared to Cambodia with USD3.5 million and Thailand USD86 million, according to an assessment from the Hanoi-based Institute for Tourism Development Research.
However, the Tourism Authority of Thailand, which is responsible for all tourism promotions reported it had an overall USD46 million budget in 2014 to cover all costs including salaries and the upkeep of overseas offices.
Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports has some funds for promotions that overlap with the TAT, but nothing on the scale of the TAT’s budget, which suggests Vietnam’s assessment of Thailand’s promotional spend on tourism has been over estimaed.
Malaysia and Singapore also have generous budgets to boost tourism of USD130 million and USD100 million, respectively, the highest in the ASEAN region.
For January to March this year, Vietnam welcomed 2,007,884 international tourists declining 13.7% during the same period last year.

sourced:ttrweekly.com