Vietnam International Travel Mart – VITM Ha Noi 2018 goes to its end

   On 1st April 2018, at Ha Noi Friendship Cultural Palace, 91 Tran Hung Dao, The Viet Nam International Travel Mart – VITM Hanoi 2018 marked its end after nearly four vibrant and exciting days. 

   During the past days, VITM Ha Noi 2018 has truely become a festival of Viet Nam tourism businesses. Thousands of Vietnamese and international businesses carried out numbers of promotion activities and various products were on offer for tourists and business partners, dozens of tourism seminars, forums and press conferences were intensely taken place.
   502 booths owned by 675 businesses, including 112 stands belong to enterprises and promotion agencies of 21 countries and territories welcomed approximately 3,000 arrivals of businesses to work at the show. After 3 days, VITM attracted about 60,000 arrivals to visit and purchase tourism products, thus, VITM firmly maintained the leading privileged position of the International Travel Mart in the region. Almost every VITM participating businesses directly offered promotional products to their partners and people. Regarding demand-stipulus tours, according to statistics of 21tour operators, 29.300 domestic and international tours have been sold at VITM. The revenues of these companies estimatedly reach 245 billion Dong. The images of booths which are full of visitors who are whishing to learn and buy tourism products are evidents of success of VITM. VITM Ha Noi 2018 witnessed two leading airlines corporation of Viet Nam, namely, Vietnam Airlines and Jetstar Airlines which have strong response to tourism demand stimulus program. Their organizations of directly selling promotional airtickets for VITM guests are always crowded with long queues.
   VITM Ha Noi 2018 has built its image, with large-scale and beautiful booths which can be listed the names of Vietravel, Saigontourist, Flamingo Group, and cuisine corner…. The international pavilions of Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and Cambodia are also invested extra carefully and eye-catching. These pavillions have characteristics and indentities of each country which won admiration of visiting customers. After 6 times of organization, VITM has developed itself as a typical event of Viet Nam tourism industry which contains a deep cultural context..

   VITM Ha Noi 2018 themed “Online tourism – Viet Nam tourism makes advance to 4.0 industry”. At the tradeshow, Viet Nam Tourism Association in collaboration with concerned stakeholders organzies the Tourism Honours & Awards Ceremony for representative businesses and individuals which are performing excellent and positively contributing to the tourism development, namely, the leading cooking artisans of Viet Nam, typical travel and hotel directors, and authentic tourism products. Particularly, the 12 leading tour operators sending tourists abroad in 2017 have been honored. Besides, Viet Nam Tourism Association and its partners organized 18 events, including conferences, workshops, seminars, and press conferences on professional issues of tourism industry such as Forum on Online Tourism, Symposium on “Conservation and Development of Traditional Vietnamese Food Culture”, and Tourism Start-Ups Forum. Furthermore, many tourism promotion programmes which were participated by hundreds of businesses, Vietnam Tourism Adminstration of Tourism, Departments of tourism management and numbers of related agencies. 

   According to the survey whose method was introduced by EU-funded project, the organizers have undertaken an opinion survey on the exhibitors participating VITM Ha Noi 2018, the results are as follow: 
   – Overall, 81.2% among those institutions satisfied with the fair, 16.6% of them rated average and 2.2% unsatisfied. 
   – On the question of meeting the objectives of participating the travel mart, there are 94.6% of answered businesses satisfied, including 20% showed thier exceeded objectives. The remaining 5.4% of businesses revealed that they did not meet the objectives. 
   – Regarding the question of possibility of returning VITM 2019, there are 74.5% of them definitely committed to return.

   Speaking at the Ceremony, Mr. Vu The Binh, Standing Vice Chairman of Vietnam Tourism Association, Chairman of Vietnam Society of Travel Agencies, President of VITM’s Organizing Committee expressed his gratitude to supporting agencies: “VITM Ha Noi 2018 achieved good results thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the People’s Committee of Hanoi, Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, the tourism promotion agencies and businesses from countries where are the target markets of Viet Nam tourism. And obviously, it cannot be successful without the involvement of Vietnamese tourism enterprises, those who are the main factor of VITM. The active participation of Vietnam Airlines, which is the Travel Patron Airlines Corporation – the Official Carrier for VITM, and Joint Stock Company of Sai Gon – Binh Tay Beer, Diamond Sponsor”, he said./.

Chien Thang