Coordinating with World Bank to undertake field research on the current situation of Vietnam tourism

The World Bank (WB) has a plan to cooperate with the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism to implement an analysis and evaluation project on Vietnam tourism to collect data for the Vietnam Tourism Thematic Report.
From August 20 to 24, 2018, on behalf of VNAT, the Institute for Tourism Development Research (ITDR) has cooperated with WB’s experts to carry out a field research on the current situation of Vietnam tourism at some major tourist centers of the country. During this visit, the WB’s experts agreed to provide technical assistance to ITDR in contents on analyzing the competitiveness of Vietnam’s tourism compared to neighboring countries in the region, contributing to the development of Vietnam tourism development strategy in the new period.
The team had working sessions and exchanges, in-depth interviews with central and local tourism management agencies, including: Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, Institute Tourism Development Research, Vietnam Tourism Association, Departments of Tourism of Ha Noi, Quang Ninh, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City, Quang Nam Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Association. Thereby, the experts have commented on the overview of Vietnam tourism about the potentials, current situation, development trend, projects, ongoing programmes and challenges and difficulties of the tourism industry at current stage. There are numbers of issues were raised in response to the rapid growth of the tourism industry, but it is still to be in the context of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Specifically, the issue of analyzing the competitiveness of Vietnamese tourism, the expectation of future development should be considered in relation to the tourism development of neighboring competitive countries; raising the capacity of Vietnam’s tourism human resources, effectively protecting natural and cultural tourism resources for sustainable development; Waste treatment, capacity calculation and environmental impact are also in place.
In addition, the experts also put forward criticisms and possible difficulties in the future if the lack of planning investment, or the source of customers, will affect the development of markets and products, quality of service; plan to manage accommodation business forms on the shared economic foundation of the localities.
The information collected through the mission will be a useful document for World Bank experts to develop analytical reports, actively contributing to the development of the new Strategy on Vietnam Tourism Development.

Chien Thang