In the context of many new tourism trends and needs, promotion and advertising work must also have new directions to affirm the position of Vietnam's tourism brand.
In 2023, Vietnam was honoured to receive 19 top awards in the world and 54 top awards in Asia from the World Travel Awards, of which Vietnam was honoured as the "World's Leading Heritage Destination" for the fourth time and as "Asia's Leading Destination" for the 5th consecutive time.
Recently, the national tourism promotion website (vietnam.travel) of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism was ranked among the top in the region by the global website evaluation and ranking website similarweb.com, surpassing the tourism website of Thailand in terms of access rate from international markets.
Recently, along with promoting the implementation of communication and promotion campaigns on digital platforms, Vietnam's tourism industry has also proactively participated in many major international tourism events and fairs, contributing to promoting the number of international visitors to Vietnam.
In the first three months of this year alone, Vietnam welcomed 4.6 million international visitors, an increase of 72% compared to the same period in 2023 and an increase of 3.2% compared to the same period in 2019, before the COVID-19 epidemic.
In the first three months of this year alone, Vietnam welcomed 4.6 million international visitors, an increase of 72% compared to the same period in 2023 and an increase of 3.2% compared to the same period in 2019, before the COVID-19 epidemic. This shows that recent efforts to promote Vietnamese tourism have brought positive effects, helping Vietnam's image become more and more recognised on the world tourism map.
However, it cannot be denied that Vietnam's tourism advertising and promotion still has many bottlenecks, especially when Vietnam's budget for this work is only about 2 million USD per year, lower than compared to the investment of more than 100 million USD per year of other countries in the region, such as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
From the perspective of state management, Deputy General Director of Vietnam National Tourism Administration, Ha Van Sieu, commented that promoting tourism in Vietnam is facing many challenges, such as fierce competition among destinations in terms of attracting international tourists after the COVID-19 pandemic, high prices of services and air tickets due to increased prices of input materials and political and economic conflicts in the world affecting attracting visitors from some traditional source markets.
In addition, the emergence of new market and technology trends also requires research, forecasting and response to be more timely and effective.
This situation requires Vietnamese tourism to have new and creative methods and approaches in advertising and promotion to meet competitive requirements and keep up with rapid changes in the market and technology.
General Director of Oxalis Adventure, Nguyen Chau A, said that to have correct and successful tourism promotion solutions, it is necessary to pay attention to market research. Currently, a large part of international tourists come to Vietnam on their own, not through travel companies, so to promote the interest of this number of tourists, there needs to be new ways to approach them, especially through digital media platforms.
Previously, we were still used to promoting by participating in fairs and working with international partners to have them send visitors. 80% of Vietnamese tourism businesses operate under the "B to B" model, meaning they only sell tours through foreign partners, so there is no need to invest in marketing costs. Still, as the number of self-sufficient tourists increases, businesses are forced to pay attention to the "B to C" model, which means selling tours directly to customers, and of course, they will have to pay attention to brand promotion.
Nguyen Chau A
According to Nguyen Chau A, tourists in general, especially European and American tourists, often look for destinations that possess things that are not available in their homeland, so Vietnamese tourism needs to emphasise these factors when promoting destination information.
Regarding promotion methods, Deputy Director Ha Van Sieu said that it is necessary to deploy focused and key activities, each year selecting three to four promotional activities abroad to create breakthroughs, deploy investment at the national level, with the contribution of businesses in terms of ideas, consulting and finance, creating a high spillover effect.
At the same time, it is necessary to diversify types and methods of market access and combine and optimise integrated marketing communication with online and direct forms.
At the 2024 Tourism Promotion Conference, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism announced a plan to promote tourism in 2024. The key task is to participate in three international tourism fairs (VITM London, CITM China, ASEAN-China); organise six programmes to introduce Vietnamese tourism in North America, Australia, China, Europe, ASEAN, and India; three Vietnamese Cultural Tourism Festivals in Japan and Korea; welcome ten famtrip groups from China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, India, America, Taiwan (China).
In particular, the highlight event of the 2024 tourism promotion programme is the "Vietnam Expo in Hollywood", taking place in the US in September with a budget of about 10 billion VND mobilised from socialisation sources to strengthen the promotion of Vietnamese tourism through cinema.
