ThuyNga Thai

Marketing aspects in tourism development

The marketing analysis of Vietnam tourism industry

for long term development

Thesis
Fall 2011
Business School
Bachelor of Business Administration
International Business
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SEINÄJOKI UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

Thesis abstract

Faculty: Business School

Degree programme: Bachelor of Business Administration
Specialisation: International Business

Author/s:ThuyNga THAI

Title of thesis: Marketing aspects in tourism development. The marketing analysis

of Vietnam tourism industry for long term development

Supervisor(s): Cory Isaacs

Year: 2011 Number of pages: 81 Number of appendices: 1

_________________________________________________________________

The objectives of this paper are to identify the shortcomings that have been
hindering the development of Vietnam tourism and seeking for the solution for
these shortcomings in the aspects of marketing. Vietnam is a country lying in the
peninsula of South Asia and holds great potentials of nature, culture and human
power for tourism growth. Despite much effort on marketing campaigns, Vietnam
tourism is still lagging behind other giant tourism industries in Asia region.

The thesis applied both qualitative and quantitative research methods, consisting
of the data collected from the official statistics of the organizations namely World
Travel and Tourism Councils, World Tourism Organization, Pacific Asia Travel
Association, General Statistics Office of Vietnam; and an in-depth interview with
Mr. Adam Bray, who is a travel journalist, writer and Indochina expertise.

From the study, the writer suggests that Vietnam tourism should focus on four
aspects of marketing, including branding Vietnam’s tourism image, designing
effective advertisement to raise brand awareness, applying marketing into ICT,
and developing tour offerings and focusing on niche market.

Keywords: marketing, tourism, Vietnam

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CONTENT

Thesis abstract...................................................................................................... 2
CONTENT............................................................................................................... 3
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ......................................................................... 5
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.................................................................................... 6
1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 7
1.1 Thesis purpose ........................................................................................ 7
1.2 Research questions ................................................................................. 8
1.3 Research methods ................................................................................... 8
1.4 Thesis structure ....................................................................................... 9
2 GENERAL CONTEXT OF TOURISM IN 2010 ............................................... 11
2.1 Overview of worldwide tourism since the crisis year of 2008 ........... 11
2.2 Vietnam’s tourism strategy from 2001 to 2010 .................................... 13
3 VIETNAM TOURISM FACTS ......................................................................... 14
3.1 Basic facts .............................................................................................. 14
3.2 The current situation of Vietnam tourism industry ............................. 17
3.2.1 Achievements of Vietnam tourism................................................. 17
3.2.2 Estimation and forecast for Vietnam tourism ............................... 21
3.2.3 Limitations in Vietnam tourism ...................................................... 23
4 MARKETING AND TOURISM ....................................................................... 25
4.1 Basic theory of marketing ..................................................................... 25
4.2 Marketing concept in tourism ............................................................... 26
5 BRANDING .................................................................................................... 28
5.1 Positioning country’s image and core values ..................................... 29
5.2 Visual designs ........................................................................................ 34
6 ADVERTISING ............................................................................................... 37
6.1 Advertising as a marketing tool .................................................................. 37
6.2 The executed commercials of Vietnam tourism .................................. 40
6.2.1 Message design............................................................................... 41
6.2.2 Message performance .................................................................... 44
6.2.3 Media selection................................................................................ 45
7 INTERNET MARKETING ............................................................................... 46
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7.1 Internet’s benefits for tourism communication ................................... 46

7.2 Rebuilding the official tourism site ...................................................... 49
7.2.1 User-friendly content and design .................................................. 49
7.2.2 Enhancing supporting features .................................................... 51
7.2.3 User-generated content .................................................................. 54
7.3 Commercial websites ............................................................................ 58
7.4 Information and feedback ..................................................................... 59
8 TOURISM PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND NICHE FOCUS ...................... 61
8.1 Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions tourism ................... 63
8.2 Spiritual tourism .................................................................................... 64
8.3 Volunteer tourism .................................................................................. 65
8.4 Eco tourism ............................................................................................ 67
8.5 Culinary tourism .................................................................................... 67
9 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 69
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................. 73
APPENDIX............................................................................................................ 78
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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: International tourism arrivals, recipes and market share in 2009

Figure 2: Map of Vietnam

Table 1: International tourism 2010 and forecast 2011

Figure 3: The development of international arrivals to Vietnam in last decade

Table 2: The estimation and forecast for worldwide tourism industry’s contributions

Figure 4: The total contribution of Vietnam tourism to GDP and employment from
2005 to 2010 actual, 2011 estimated and 2021 forecasted

Figure 5: Total number of international visitors by countries in 2010

Figure 6: The official Vietnam tourism’s slogan and logo since 2005

Figure 7: The nominated slogan and logo for the period 2011 - 2015

Figure 8: Internet users by regions by March 31, 2011

Figure 9: The conclusion of the study

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

APEC Asia Pacific Economic Cooporation

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GSO General Statistics Office of Vietnam

ICT Information and Communication Technology

PATA Pacific Asia Travel Association

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization

UNTWO World Tourism Organization

VNAT Vietnam National Administration of Tourism

WEF World Economic Forum

WTTC World Travel & Tourism Council

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Thesis purpose

Today traveling became an essential demand and a dispensable part of modern

life. Tourism is one of the most significant industries all over the world. It plays a
key role in fostering the global economic growth and brings about developments of
other sectors such as property, investment, hospitality, transport, recreation and
service. Tourism industry is the great generator of a vast amount of jobs across
national and regional economies, approximately contributing 6-7% of worldwide
employment, both direct and indirect jobs (World Tourism Organization). For its
enormous benefits, many countries recently have placed much more efforts on the
sustainable development of this “smokeless industry.” To Vietnam, as seen from
practicality, tourism industry affirmed an important position in national economy
with every passing day. Vietnam has sufficient tourism resources like natural
beauty and cultural values as neighboring countries. However, the number of
international visitors to Vietnam is still much lower than other countries in Asia
area. Many tourism experts and economists evaluated the contribution of tourism
to Vietnamese economy has not been worthy of advantages and potential Vietnam
possesses. From this issue, a search for an appropriate strategy for Vietnam
tourism has been debating on media and economic references and drawn wide
attention of various stakeholders like policy makers, investors, professionals and
others who are interested in sustainable tourism in recent years. The role of
marketing for sustainable tourism development becomes more essential and
pressing than ever. This study will present the analysis of Vietnam tourism, and
the recommendations on several marketing aspects, including branding,
advertising, internet-based communication, product development and niche
market focus. All these aspects are in-depth analyzed and studied in attempt on
improving the current Vietnam tourism environment and facilitating long term
development.
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1.2 Research questions

The study is focused to answer the questions as follows:

- Why Vietnam has enormous natural and cultural resources much more than
other Asia’s tourism industries, its tourism was still lagging behind them?

- What is the image appropriate for Vietnam tourism’s brand?

- Which elements in the tourism advertisement should be modified and

focused to produce an effective advertising that is worth to its budget?

- With abundant benefits from Internet, what can Vietnam do to market the
tourism?

- What are the tour segments that Vietnam tourism should focus on to make
the most of its tourism potentials and advantages?

1.3 Research methods

In the study, the qualitative and quantitative research methods are applied. The
quantitative method is involved in collecting data from the credible sources of
VNAT, GSO, UNTWO, WTTC, PATA. Since then, the data are compared,
analyzed and integrated into the figures in order to create a clearly view for
readers, about the issues related to economic growth, tourism growth rate, number
of international visitors and forecast.

The qualitative method is applied in an in-depth interview with Mr. Adam Bray via
email about several aspects of Vietnam tourism. Mr. Bray is American travel writer
and journalist working with news media CNN, CNNGo, The Economist and BBC.
He is an expert on Indochina history, culture, geography and tourism. His works
were published in no less than 20 books and trustworthy travel guide magazines
 9

such as ThingsAsian Press, Vietnam Pathfinder, National Geographic, Oryx (Qatar

Airlines). With his travel experience and deep knowledge on Vietnamese cultures
and tourism, Mr. Bray provides a frank and useful interview on Vietnam tourism
that came out one of the information source for this study. The detailed interview
is listed in the Appendix at the end of this thesis.

All the information, data and statistics are carefully collected, analyzed and applied
to this study from the trusted sources to gain the highest credibility and
preciseness of this study.

1.4 Thesis structure

The thesis is divided into nine parts presenting the content as follows:

Part 1: Introduce about the study including the objectives, research

methodologies, and a structure for easy accessibility

Part 2: Present the general context of tourism in the world in term of the number of
international arrivals, revenues, market shares amongst the regions in the crisis
period and the overview of promotion activities for the recovery in 2010. There is a
small part introducing about the goals which was set out in the government’s
development policy for the period 2001 – 2010.

Part 3: Give short facts of Vietnam to prove its tourism advantages. Then, there is
a presentation on the positive and negative side of the current Vietnam tourism’s
situation and an optimistic forecast for its growth in future

Part 4: This is purely about academic theory of marketing and tourism. It

introduces about the principal role of marketing in business as well as in tourism
industry.
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Part 5: Study about branding theory and the elements to build Vietnam’s brand by
two step: seeking the image and symbol for Vietnam tourism and develop the
visual types with core values to communicate to the prospects

Part 6: Discuss on the advertising with its definition, categorization and detailed
presentation in building an effective advertising clips for Vietnam tourism through
steps of setting objectives, message design, message performance and media
selection.

Part 7: About the Internet-based marketing’s role. Firstly, there is an introduction

on its benefits to tourism business. Secondly, it discusses on the Internet using as
a communication tool.

Part 8: Presents the importance of developing the existing product line and
concentrating on niche markets for two purposes of well exploiting the tourism
potentials and approaching various segment and niche markets

Part 9: Conclusion of the learning outcomes from the whole study

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2 GENERAL CONTEXT OF TOURISM IN 2010

2.1 Overview of worldwide tourism since the crisis year of 2008

In recognition of its profound economic power, many regions and countries have
placed great efforts on tourism’s sustainable development into wide ranges.
Tourism became one of the important industries whose contribution to GDP and
employment and growth rate are all at high level in the 2000s. In 2009, total
world’s international tourist arrivals was 880 million; however, it went down by
4.2% due to global economic crisis since late 2008, and tourism receipts dropped
by 5.7% compared to the previous year. Among the world’s regions, Asia’s
tourism seemed less being affected than others. It reduced by only 2% of
international arrivals whilst other regions suffered loss around 5-6%.

Figure 1: International tourism arrivals, recipes and market share in 2009

Source: Kester J. 2009

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As shown in the figure 1, there are totally 880 million international tourist arrivals
and USD 852 billion recorded in the whole world in 2009. The profit number in
2009 is 0.7% less than in 2008. Europe took the lead in both the number of
arrivals and turnover with 460 million international arrivals, occupying more than
half of total market share. Asia and the Pacific region followed at the second place
with 21% of the world’s international arrivals and seized nearly a quarter of total
tourism income. American countries came third with 141 million international
tourists and generated USD 165 billion. Finally, Middle East and Africa had nearly
the same market share in arrivals. These two regions had totally 99 million
international tourists and reached USD 29 billion, much less than other regions.
The year of 2009 was the bad year for most of countries and economic areas. The
decrease of tourism industry was also inevitable due to high unemployment rate
and crude oil price caused by the global downturn since the end of 2008. All the
travel agencies and Tourism Boards put more efforts to improve business
situations by designing economical tour packages and giving more special offer to
attract travelers. In Asia, there were many promotion launched in 2009 to
stimulate travel demands for both domestic and international tourism. For
example, Vietnam launched “Impressive Vietnam” campaign; Hong Kong
concentrated on green tourism with “Hong Kong Nature Kaleidoscope” and applied
a visa-free agreement with Russia; China issued travel coupons or Australia
launched marketing campaign “No leave no life” on March 2009, according to the
report of the 22nd Joint Meeting of the UNWTO Commission for East Asia and the
Pacific and the UNWTO Commission for South Asia held in Hanoi, Vietnam’s
capital in May 2010.

In 2010, alongside the improved global economy, the world witnessed the strong
rebound of worldwide tourism industries beyond expectation. International arrivals
of the whole world climbed up by 6.7% and increased 58 million against 2009,
reached 935 million arrivals and 22 million more than the pre-crisis peak level of
2008 (913 million at that time). Being the first region to recover and having the
highest growth rate with 204 million international visitors last year, 181 million
higher than 2009, Asia was praised for its strong capacity of resiliency alike the
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previous situations such as the Asia’s financial crisis in 1997 – 1998, SARS
outbreak in 2003 or tsunami in 2004.

Table 1: International tourism 2010 and forecast 2011

International tourism 2010 Forecast

Arrivals Market share Growth rate 2011
World 936 100% 6.7% 4-5%
Europe 473 51% 3.2% 2-4%
Asia and the Pacific 204 22% 12.6% 7-9%
Americas 150 16% 7.7% 4-6%
Africa 49 5% 6.4% 4-7%
Middle East 60 6% 13.9% 7-10%

Source: Data collected from UNWTO

2.2 Vietnam’s tourism strategy from 2001 to 2010

From 1990s, Vietnam carried out reforming the whole country with many
renovation policies to expand markets and open to foreign trade. At the end of the
1990s, Vietnam began to get noticed by international public as an emerging
market with high growth speed. Alongside receiving considerable flows of foreign
investment, Vietnam welcomed international visitors much more since then. At that
time Vietnamese Government signed a decision on approval of “Vietnam Tourism
Development Strategy 2001–2010” in order to enhance national tourism industry in
accordance with the world’s trend.

The main objectives of Vietnam tourism marketing strategy:

- Effectively taking advantage of nature, ecology, historical and cultural

traditions; mobilizing human resource, courting international co-operation
and support to develop tourism as the spearhead economic sector
contributing to the country’s industrialization and modernization.
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- Strive to reach 3–3.5 million international arrivals to Vietnam, 15–16 million

domestic arrivals with USD 2 billion of revenue in 2005

- Strive to reach 5.5–6 million international arrivals, 25–26 million domestic

arrivals, USD 4–4.5 billion of revenue in 2010

(Information System of Strategy, Plan and Project)

In brief, tourism is one of the most lucrative and fast-growing industries in the
world. It has been increasing continually in term of the number of international
arrivals and tourist expenditure. In realization of the tourism’s potentials in many
aspects, Vietnam had proposed a strategic plan for the period of 2001–2010 with
great efforts to develop the tourism and got remarkable achievements which are
mainly contributed by the national tourism resources and advertising campaigns.

3 VIETNAM TOURISM FACTS

3.1 Basic facts

Vietnam locates on the peninsula of South Asia, contiguous to China, Laos,

Cambodia, Gulf of Thailand, and Gulf of Tonkin. Vietnam is a tropical country with
diverse topography consisting of densely mountains, hills, forests, rivers, seas, two
great deltas and plateau, waterfalls. Hills and mountains make up three quarters of
the surface area and a long coastline stretches 3,444 kilometers from North to
South. The climate varies amongst the regions. The average temperature is
around 22ºC to 27ºC with high rain volume and humidity, suitable for traveling all
around the year. Vietnam’s natural richness is a valuable resource for the
development of economy and tourism.

Vietnam accounts no less than 54 ethnics mainly living in remote areas, having
their own languages and cultural identity. Additionally, in the colonial time of
 15

China, France and America, Vietnam acquired their cultural quintessence that
partly comprises a diversified culture of Vietnam. Vietnamese culture was
dramatically influenced from Chinese and French, seen through the architecture of
temples, churches and housing. With the long-lasting history, Vietnam has more
than seven thousand heritages related to history, culture marking the periods of
establishing, protecting and developing the country in the past.

The following information is the basic facts of Vietnam and the most popular
destinations within Vietnam are shown on the figure 2.

Official name The Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Independence 2nd September 1945 (from France)
Capital Ha Noi
Political party Communist
Region East Asia and Pacific
Location in Southeastern Asia, bordering the Gulf of
Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin, East Sea and China,
Laos, and Cambodia
Total area 331,210 sq km
Land area 329,560 sq km
Coastline 3,444 sq km
Terrain low, flat delta in south and north; central
highlands; hilly, mountainous in far north and
northwest
Climate tropical in south; monsoonal in north with hot,
rainy season (May to September) and warm, dry
season (October to March)
Major tourist destinations Ho Chi Minh, Ha Noi, NhaTrang, Da Nang, Hoi
An, Hue, Ha Long Bay, Tay Nguyen, Me Kong
Delta, Mui Ne, PhanThiet, Sapa, Da Lat
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Religion Buddhist 9.3%, Catholic 6.7%, HoaHao 1.5%,

Cao Dai 1.1%, Protestant 0.5%, Muslim 0.1%,
none 80.8%
Language Vietnamese, French, Chinese, English, and
Khmer, some other dialects
Time zone GMT/UTC +7
Internet country code .vn
Monetary dong (VND)
Figure 2: Map of Vietnam
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Source: CIA, Worldbank

The world heritages in Vietnam recognized by UNESCO include:

Tangible heritages:

- Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long – Ha Noi (2010)

- Complex of Hue Monuments (1993)
- Hoi An Ancient Town (1999)
- My Son Sanctuary (1999)
- Ha Long Bay (1994) and currently in the 28 candidate finalist of
New7Wonders of Nature campaign
- PhongNha – Ke Bang National Park (2003)
- Temple of Literature stelae – Ha Noi (2010)

Intangible heritages:

- The Cultural Space of Gong in the Central Highlands (2005)

- NhaNhac (the Royal Refined music) of Hue (2003)
- Quan ho BacNinh folk songs (2009)
- CaTru singing (2009)

(UNESCO, New7Wonders)

Vietnam is also appraised by international community as a peaceful country with

stable politics and constant economic growth. This is a safe place for travelling
and business establishment.

3.2 The current situation of Vietnam tourism industry

3.2.1 Achievements of Vietnam tourism

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Upon on the proposed objectives, Vietnamese government appointed leadership

levels and ministries to put the strategy in force. The investment from government,
internal and external entrepreneurs into infrastructure, tourism technology and
facilities, tourism destination and business management system has changed the
complexion of tourism step by step. It scored the successively remarkable
performances by year-over-year reaped profit and outstanding contributions to
economic growth, poverty reduction, social security assurance, historical and
cultural preservation, and environment conservation as well.

Tourist segments are expanded and varied from East and South Asia, Europe,
North America and other continents. For supplying to the strongly increasing travel
demand, Vietnam has focused on developing infrastructure and hospitality sector
to facilitate transportation and accommodation. In 2008, Vietnam had 8,556
accommodations with total 170,551 rooms in which there were 4,283 five-star-
standard hotels, totally 109,198 rooms. At that time, the tourism had more than
600 international and 10,000 domestic travel companies. Vietnam actively joined
in cooperation of organizations; international and regional co-operation
mechanism about tourism such as ASEAN, APEC, ASEM, UNWTO, PATA.
(Foreign Trade Summit, 2008) Thus, the tourism relationships with other countries
are stepped up and intensified e.g. “Passion Indochine” with Laos and Cambodia,
collaboration commitments with Thailand, Sichuan, Myanmar, and Egypt.
Moreover, Vietnam frequently participates in many tourism exhibitions and fairs
along with implementing the promotion activities in order to further the tourism
industry.

Ten years ago, the international visitors to Vietnam was as half as those to
Philippines and equal to one fortieth of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. At
present, the distance has been shortened year by year and surpass over
Philippines. The recent tourism’s growth rate is about 20% on average annually. In
1994, there were only 1 million international arrivals to Vietnam, until 2006, this
number was raised to approximately 3.6 million, then continued up to more than 5
million last year 2010. As illustrated in figure 3, the number of international arrivals
 19

to Vietnam had been spiraling upward particularly fast from 2001 to 2010, except
an unavoidable drop in 2009 because of the global economic recession. However,
Vietnam’s recovery competence was rather impressive when the foreign tourists
jumped sharply in last 2010, relatively 34% up compared to the previous crisis
years.

Figure 3: The development of international arrivals to Vietnam in last decade

6 000 000

5 000 000

4 000 000

3 000 000

2 000 000

1 000 000

0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
2 330 05 2 627 98 2 428 73 2 927 87 3 467 75 3 583 48 4 171 56 4 253 74 3 772 35 5 049 85

Source: Data collected from GSO

According to the report of World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) (April 2011),
Vietnam ranked 47th, 54th and 12th respectively in terms of the overall tourism
development, the sector’s contribution to the national economy, and the long-term
(10-year) tourist growth. In 2010, the tourism contributed 3.9% of the national GDP
and about 3% of the labor force, nearly 1,397 million labors working directly in
tourism. Moreover, the indirect contribution was valued at about USD 12.5 billion,
accounting for 12.4% of GDP with over 4.5 million indirect labors. The revenue
from international tourists was estimated at USD 4.58 billion, gaining 6.7% of the
total national export in 2010. It is expected by VNAT to reach USD 15.9 billion
within next 10 years. And thanks to the tourism’s dramatic expansion, hotel sector
rose by 27.8% with the additional 10,447 rooms (STR Global Construction Pipeline
Report, TravelWeekly 2011). Vietnamese economy as a whole and tourism
 20

industry in particularly is the promising markets for foreign and domestic investors
recently.

Owing to the stable politics, temperate climate, natural richness, amazing beauty
of beach cities and antique architecture, Vietnam was honored to be chosen as
the destination of many large scale and prevalent events such as Miss Earth 2007,
Miss Universe 2008, Miss Earth 2010, APEC Summit 2006. In April 2011, the forth
International Fireworks Competition 2011, which took place annually on the banks
of Han River at Da Nang beach city, attracted a fairly great number of external and
internal visitors.

At the moment, Vietnam is the destination favored by lots of international tourists,

especially tourists from Australia, Japan, Singapore and Thailand. This is the
result from a survey, by PATA and Visa International Company and largely
announced in mid-November 2010, on 7000 people at more than 10 countries and
territories. In the beginning of May 2011, TripAdvisor© – World’s most trusted
travel advice™ reported Traveler’s Choice Destinations Awards ranked by
worldwide travelers. The results were that two tourist destinations at Vietnam, Ha
Long Bay and Hoi An Antique Town, listed in “Top 25 Destinations in Asia”.
Additionally, Vietnam was introduced in a publication named “50 Tours of a
Lifetime” that recommends “a 14-day-excursion” with “action-packed with
quintessential Vietnamese experiences”. This is the sixth publication released by
National Geographic, a famous travel magazine. It was said that Lonely Planet
recently added Sapa, a mountainous province situated in the northern Vietnam,
amongst the world’s best tourist attractions like the Grand Canyon in the US,
Mount Coock in New Zealand, Lake District in England or Torres de Paine in Chile
in its list of “Top 10 places to walk” (Lookatvietnam.com, May 2011).

In general, Vietnam harvested a large profit from this thriving industry thanks to the
efforts of tourism improvement and a soaring economy which has partly attracted
domestic and foreign investments in multi aspects. Apart from frequently launched
marketing campaigns to introduce and enhance Vietnam tourism, the efforts and
 21

cooperation from travel agencies in attempt of creating new tour packages and
continuously upgrading competence staff and service quality, in order to meet
traveler’s higher demands and keep pace with new tourism trends in region and
the world, contributed for the optimistic results.

3.2.2 Estimation and forecast for Vietnam tourism

The following figures are estimations at tourism industry’s contribution to economy

of the world and Vietnam in 2011 and forecast for 2021, as far as GDP,
employment, visitor export, spending and capital investment are concerned.

Table 2: The estimation and forecast for worldwide tourism industry’s contributions

2011 2021

Direct contribution to GDP 1,850 2,861

Total contribution to GDP 5,991.9 9,226.9

Direct contribution to employment (thousand jobs) 99,048 120,427

Total contribution to employment (thousand jobs) 258,592 323,826

Visitor exports 1,163 1,789

Domestic spending 2,637 4,128

Leisure spending 2,963 4,604

Business spending 899 1,402

Capital investment 651 1,124

Source: Data collected from WTTC (February 2011), unit: USD billion, 2011
constant prices and exchange rates

Despite having to cope with economic challenges in 2011 like oil price escalation,
travel industry is still expected to be the fastest growing one in the world. As
reported in table 2, worldwide tourism industry’s direct contribution to global GDP
went up by 3.3%, to USD 1,770 billion in the recovery year 2010. This number is
 22

forecasted to be further by 4.5% to USD 1850 billion with 3 million more jobs for
direct workforce during 2011; and expected to double by 2021. Especially in
respect of capital investment, it is hoped to get a rise of approximately 42% in
2021 over 2011. Tourism is said to be the category generating the fourth largest
export capability globally after fuels, chemicals and automotive products. This is
also the substantial source of foreign exchange income and the number one
export category for most of developing countries in the world. In 2011, the exports
by international visitors are hoped to reach USD 1,163 billion for the whole world.
Moreover, it is estimated that worldwide international arrivals will reach 1.6 billion
by 2020.

As a whole, worldwide tourism has an optimistic prediction in the first ten years of
new millennium. Particularly, emerging countries are hoped for its dramatic growth
and powerful capability of fostering both international and domestic travel. Another
forecast announced by PATA (March 2011), among Asian sub-regions, Southeast
Asia would be the fastest growing one with over 8%, subsequently South Asia at
about 7.5% and Northeast Asia with over 7% per annum.

Figure 4 below reveals an estimation of a continued rise in total Vietnam tourism

contribution to GDP in 2011, reaching USD 10.37 billion. It is also forecasted to
triple in next 10 years. In aspect of employment, there is only a very slight increase
in 2011. Besides, this organization also estimates that Vietnam tourism can get
invested by USD 4.59 billion at the end of 2011. It seems that after a successful
recovery year 2010, Vietnam tourism would step a bit slowly forward than the
previous years, though it’s believed to continue expanding by WTTC experts. By
2021, Vietnam is forecasted to serve total 6,585,000 international tourist arrivals
(WTTC, February 2011).

Figure 4: The total contribution of Vietnam tourism to GDP and employment from
2005 to 2010 actual, 2011 estimated and 2021 forecasted
 23

Total contribution of Vietnam tourism to GDP and employment

VND billion (norminal prices) million labors
700000 6000
600000 5000
500000
4000
400000
3000
300000
2000
200000
100000 1000
GDP
0 0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 E 2021 F

Source: Data collected from WTTC (February 2011)

3.2.3 Limitations in Vietnam tourism

On account of Government’s new policies and every united efforts in many areas
including the first tourism marketing strategy, Vietnam tourism has stepped
towards a greater height and got optimistic results in these past 10 years. Vietnam
currently has the international tourist number higher than some nations; but it’s still
so far behind Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand – the most famous countries Asia
tourism. As visible in the chart below, Vietnam’s quantity of foreign visitors is still
very humble when placed next to others.

Figure 5: Total number of international visitors by countries in 2010

 24

24,6
Unit: million

15,8

11,6
8,8 8,6
5,58 5,05
3,5
2,5 2,5 2,4

Preliminary data collected from PATA

In the attempt of developing the tourism, Vietnamese Government aimed at

preservation and rebuilding policies, infrastructure construction, transport
upgrading, hospitality investment in general. Furthermore, there are the efforts on
professionally training tourism and hospitality staff, creating new tour packages,
and promotion campaign every year consisting of television advertisement, sales
promotion, participation in tourism fairs, etc. Nonetheless, such development
strategy is evaluated to be incoherent, unmethodical and versatile. There are
undurable elements, both in macro and micro-environment. Here are some
common disadvantages in Vietnam tourism:

- Insufficient infrastructure
- Monotonous, low quality and less competitive services and tour packages
- Unexploited and undiscovered natural and geographic advantages
- Seperate performance in strategic development and lack of co-operation
amongst regions, areas, Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport and travel
agencies
- Unmanageable hygienic state
- Tourist scamming
 25

In the researcher’s point of view, the marketing strategy in period of 2001-2010

fundamentally was lack of profession and consistency amongst campaigns and
should be modified to get better outcome for next coming years as expected. To
date, tourism is a lucrative business for both private entrepreneur and a national
economy; hence, it should be put in a good development strategy with vigorous
support from marketing activities. In the scope of thesis, the writer will focus on the
marketing issues that partly help the strategic development of Vietnam tourism,
including branding, advertising, Internet-based marketing, and product
development.

4 MARKETING AND TOURISM

4.1 Basic theory of marketing

One of the very first definition of marketing by Kotler (2000, 4) is “a societal

process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through
creating, offering, and exchanging products and services of value freely with
others.” Marketing is described as the intermediary in the process of bringing
product or service from the business to the customer. Customer information
having been gathered by the marketing department will be transferred to the
business in order to, consequently, design a product or service that meets
customer’s wants and expectations. Once the product or service has been
created, the marketing department will determine how to communicate about their
differences and benefits to the customers (Moore &Pareek 2006, 8). The most
discreet and succinct description about marketing, in the writer’s view, is by
Meldrum and McDonald (2007, 3) as “the way in which an organization matches
its human, financial and physical resources with the wants and needs of its
customers.”
 26

Primarily only big companies with profound capital use marketing but today
marketing is applied widely in most categories, from FMCG to services, or in
business groups such as law, medical, finance, construction, politics and so forth.
Marketing also plays a vital role in the non-profit or governmental organizations
like charity funds, national museums, hospitals, schools or police department.
Each day we can see abundance of marketing forms packed into our daily life by
various ways, times and places: advertising on television at home, big billboards at
bus-waiting station or while being in traffic jam, on radio when seeking for morning
news, logos or messages on household objects we use, corporate website full of
information or banners on the internet and numerous events, promotions easily
caught up in every places. Along with the changing economic and competitive
environment, to date, marketing has been applied widely in much more effective
and sophisticated ways than ever. Instead of executing every sole promotion,
there is a trend for entrepreneurs to practice the Integrated Marketing
Communication by mix up several communication tools to deliver a powerful and
consistent message as well as to create relationship marketing to customers.

The two most essential goals of marketing is indicated firstly, to attract new
customers and secondly, to retain customers. It is the performance of building and
maintaining customer loyalty by incessantly satisfying customer needs and wants
(Moore &Pareek 2006, 9). In other words, the creation of value and satisfaction for
customers is the main point of modern marketing devising and implementing,
emphasized by Kotler (2000, 6).

Significantly, marketing is much more than a separate function in business; it is a

philosophy to drive the entire organization forward and require the efforts of the
whole organization from management levels to logistic staff.

4.2 Marketing concept in tourism

Tourism is primarily about human activity which involves travel from an originating
area to a destination for pleasure or business purpose. The concept embraces
 27

cultural, economic and social exchange processes. These elements are

inextricably bound together in a mesh of activity which we refer to as travel and
tourism (Lumsdon 1997, 1). This industry consists of hospitality, attractions and
events, transport, travel organizers’ and intermediaries’ sector and lastly,
destination organization sector (Middleton, Fyall, Morgan&Ranchhod 2009, 11).
Today tourism is one of the fastest growing and most competitive industries in the
world. Every countries and destinations strive to attract more tourists and begin to
pay attention to marketing their places. However, tourism needs marketing
vigorously than other products because audiences in this sector have a great deal
of choices and complicated variety of motivations for travel and the diversity of this
industry (Raju 2009, 116).

Tourism is similar to other business sectors which firstly need a good product or
service, and then secondly an effective marketing campaign is run to communicate
product or service features and information to consumer. Besides that, it needs to
continually innovate and develop product to keep it competitive against
competitors. As the globalization and high competitiveness in tourism industry, the
aspects of tourism product creativity and communication effectiveness are vital
elements to attract tourists and to gain repeated visits. Lumsdon (1997, 25) stated
that “Tourism marketing is the managerial process of anticipating and satisfying
existing and potential visitor wants more effectively than competitive suppliers or
destinations. The management of exchange is driven by profit, community gain, or
both; either way long term success depends on a satisfactory interaction between
customer and supplier. It also means securing environmental and social needs as
well as core consumer satisfaction. They can no longer be regarded as mutually
exclusive.” He concluded that tourism marketing encompasses destination
marketing to existing and potential visitors through a variety of intermediaries,
following a market plan and using marketing management tools accordingly.
Marketing for tourism requires a mix of various marketing tools due to its
complicated nature of both service and products. In other words, it contains both
intangible and tangible values of service and product.
 28

Similar to other sectors in economy, the final goals of long-term tourism marketing
plan are not apart from appealing to travelers, occupying a position in traveler
mind, and selling as much vacations as possible by means of ordinary marketing
communications such as branding, internet marketing, advertising, sales
promotions, exhibition fairs, etc. Aside from these common techniques, tourism
marketing requires collaboration among levels of authorities and leaderships as
well as citizenship awareness in order to create a tourism development.

5 BRANDING

The brand has been defined in many ways over the years and becoming an
effective tool in marketing. A brand is “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other
feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other
sellers”, according to American Marketing Association, it is any label that carries
meaning and associations. Kotler (2003, 8) emphasized that a great brand works
more than a merely symbol: “It lends coloration and resonance to a product or
service.” Branding is the combination of the whole marketing mix, leading to a
brand image in which a set of messages is conveyed to the consumer and must
be regarded as the focus of the marketing effort (Blythe 2000, 124). Applying this
marketing approach to realm of tourism and destination, destination brand is
completely defined as follows:

- Visual designs e.g. a name, symbol, logo, world, graphic identify and
differentiate the destination
- Convey the promise of a memorable travel experience in the destination
- Consolidate and reinforce the recollection of pleasurable memories of
destination experience

(Kerr 2006, cited by RohanLaksiri 2009, 20)

 29

Similar to product and service branding, destination branding is a long-term

strategy whereby it actively obtains competitive identity by positioning
internationally as a good place for foreign direct investment, commerce,
immigration and traveling. For the benefits reaped from diverse areas, destination
branding is strongly focused amongst countries to promote their countries, cities or
tourist. To date, people have many tourist destination choices but less time for
decision making. Despite the multiplicity of destinations all over the world, only a
few have reference position in the prospective tourist’s mind or “awareness set”.
The concept of destination branding dates back to the 1970s and understood to be
a competitive tool in gaining the prospect’s mind over the competitors (Woodside,
Sherrell & Lysonski 1977, 1989, cited by Kozak & Andreu 2006, 73). With
numerous nature- and culture-based potentials, Vietnam still has less foreign
tourists than China, Malaysia and Thailand. It is due to the fact that Vietnam has
not yet built a successful tourism brand as well as distinctive country’s image to
communicate to the world. Branding is an integral part in long term strategy for
Vietnam tourism development with the basic tasks including: building brand image
and awareness, core values, united and clear message.

5.1 Positioning country’s image and core values

For a strong tourism brand, firstly, it is to create a well-defined and unique brand
personality; then continues with consistent and appropriate advertising and careful
brand guardianship (Davies 2003). Sharing this point of view, Kotler and Keller
(2006, 272) listed brand positioning establishment as the first step in the four step
process of strategic brand management, and followed by a brand marketing plan
and implementation. They all stressed that shaping a brand image is the basic,
significant and preferential thing in building a brand. Two nations with such
similarities still could have different level of tourist attractiveness, almost
depending on tourist’s perception about country’s image or tourist destination.
Lack of an appropriate image leads to hinder the development strategy of Vietnam
tourism in last decade. Tim Russell (Vietnamnet, March 2011), Managing Director
of ‘Come & Go Vietnam’ travel agency in Vietnam, made an assessment on
 30

Vietnam tourism’s image: “Vietnam is a friendly, joyful country, where the prices
are reasonable. However, the images Vietnam introduced to the world have not
reflected these things yet.” Significantly, branding is not advertising, it should be
done before pouring a big sum of money into advertising campaigns. Vietnam did
the way round when spending tourism budget into broadcasting television
advertisement on expensive channels like CNN, BBC that did not bring much
results to Vietnam tourism due to lack of a distinct image and clear message to
distinguish itself from competitions. For most of tourist, Vietnam’s image is so
obscure. It seems that foreigners still remember and know most about Vietnam as
a resilient country in war time than a vibrant and charming destination today.
Vietnam’s current promotions are not powerful enough to fade away strong
impression on Vietnam’s war and introduce pretty landscapes as well as build a
new portray for Vietnam. It should be back to the very first step: figure out a
distinct symbols and images that have recall ability in foreigner’s mind and then
develop them into a tourism icon to appeal more tourists. A deeply memorable,
exclusive and inspiring symbol linked to a destination should be created and
leveraged. Actually Vietnam does not have grandiose architectural works or
notable icon to be differentiated from others like the Great Wall in China or the
Eiffel Tower in France. However, the country’s image can originate from existing
nature, culture and history like exotic landscape, long-lasting culture and tradition,
local spirit and value, which might reflect the energy, possibility and pride of the
nation (Mendiratta, CNN Task Group). Looking at some case studies from
developed-tourism countries, they all have a cleverly created and communicated
images and messages for branding tourism and the whole country. Additionally, a
brand should try to own a word in prospect’s mind (RiesA&Ries L. 2002, 22). If a
visible image is what consumer can see and identify a company’s product or
service, a word is somewhat a perception about that company’s brand. In other
word, it is the core values the company would like to offer to customers. For
example, a word of Mercedes is ‘prestige’; Volvo is ‘safety’; or Thailand is ‘exotic,
fun’. They are in combination to create a brand equity, which is the added value
attached to product or service. It is defined as “…the dimensions that distinguish
brand knowledge and affect consumer response are the awareness of the brand
 31

(in terms of brand recall and recognition) and the favorability, strength, an
uniqueness of the brand associations in consumer memory” and an emotional
relationship should be established with the customer by ensuring an accordance
between the customer’s need and the brand’s values and features (Keller 1993,
Hankinson &Cowking 1993, cited by RohanLaksiri 2009, 19)

Japan is a good example of destination branding due to the distinctively traditional

culture. Kimono, Japanese-architecture temples, festivals, cherry blossom or Mt.
Fuji are the images exclusively associated with this “Land of the Rising Sun”.
Japan is always attempting in preservation and bringing into play the traditional
heritages. Japanese are carefully educated about their traditions, customs and
etiquettes at schools, for example, they learn about Japanese gastronomy,
complicated Kimono dressing worn frequently in Japanese festivals. The image of
colorful Kimono demonstrating around streets in Japan in well-organized
traditional festivals is really impressive to foreigners who once witnessed. And it
seems to be one of Japan’s most characterized images. Vietnam has specific
traditions from its rich culture of which however has not been really made use well.
And the conventional Vietnamese-cachet festivals are not largely and creatively
promoted to the world. Besides, there are several ancient ceremonies, arts and
entertainments are slowly falling into oblivion through years because of the lack of
awareness and preservation from youth generation. Even Vietnamese traditional
costume – Ao Dai seems less favored by the youth and faded away rapidly in most
festivals nowadays. Last year Vietnamese was called upon to wear Ao Dai in New
Year days again in order to raise the cultural awareness amongst youth
community. Besides, it will be more effective by organizing community activities
involved in culture preservation frequently and encouraging the youth’s
participations. These cultural activities firstly can help raise Vietnamese’s
awareness of ethical traditions, especially youngster and children; secondly, it will
emphasize an interesting Vietnam’s image in eyes of foreigners. Additionally, for
the long term tourism development, Vietnam should intensify education of
traditional heritages in schools including Vietnamese cuisine cooking, old aged
kinds of arts, entertainments, musical instruments, handicrafts or else they will be
 32

vanished away in the near future. Another thing, whereas Japan designed
February 23rd as Mount Fuji Day because they love their “iconic peak” and was
trying to get Mt. Fuji listed in natural heritage (Ishida 2011), Vietnam seems not
know how to promote the natural favors, for instance, Ha Long Bay. In fact, Ha
Long Bay was recognized as the World Natural Heritage by UNESCO in 1994 and
was in the 28 candidate shortlist of World’s New Seven Wonders of Nature in
2009. This beautiful bay always is the must-visit destination of most and able to
become a unique tourism icon for Vietnam.

Another success in country’s image promotion is Singapore whose culture is

described as a melting pot since cultural influence from China, Malaysia and India.
Instead of using culture to promote tourism, Singapore has positioned itself as a
‘shopping paradise’. Thousands of shopping centers operates all over Singapore
and launches sales promos around the years. That attracts thousands of Asian
shopaholics to flock to this destination every year or even each season for
shopping only. Otherwise, Singapore is also well known for its cleanliness in the
world. A survey in 1998 among a board selection of travelers and tourist agents
from United States, Japan, India , Germany, Australia, United Kingdom and
Sweden by Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board, Singapore was seen as “clean,
modern and safe” (Davies 2003), that is Singapore’s positioning in people’s mind.
Even though Vietnamese cuisines are favored by foreign visitors and proposed to
be a competitive advantage for Vietnam tourism by Kotler (The SaiGon Times
2011), hygiene issues on streets and at vendors are highly concerned. It proves
that a country is capable of creating a positive image out to the world at large as
well as to become an appeal to tourists by human-made and citizen’s awareness.

The last case study is Thailand, successfully creating a brand image of “exotic,
fun, and friendly people”. The word “exotic” and “fun” imply tourist activities in
Thailand with distinctive entertainment arousing tourist’s curiosity. Moreover, its
former slogan “Thailand - The Land of the Smiles” was so successful thanks to the
local’s supports. Especially, sellers and photographers here never ask with
insistence or force them buy something with a very high price. Conversely, buying
 33

something in Vietnam sometimes could frustrate and tire tourist out of refusing
when seller follows tourist and begging them to buy souvenir. Scamming,
annoyance and poor customer service in small trade or street vendors are
hindrance to tourism growth and to tourist to approach local culture.

The differentiation is the critical thing to emphasize image of a country into the
prospect’s mind. Vietnam does not lack of advantages and distinctions to develop
tourism brand personality and build differentiations to other countries. First of all, it
is wildness and variety of Vietnam’s nature. Beside the currently famous tourist
destinations, Vietnam still has other unexploited potentials yet. With diversified
topography, Vietnam possesses seas, mountains, wildly tropical forests, and
especially the weather suitable for travelling in the whole year. Secondly, it is
about culture. Vietnam has diversified culture due to many ethnics living in
Vietnam and long-lasting quintessence in Vietnamese culture and belief. It will be
a waste that Vietnam did not introduce and marketing enough the image of their 7
natural and cultural heritages that was recognized by UNESCO to elevate them to
tourism icon. The most important thing is safety. The security and safety issues,
which are most concerned in travel destination choice, are affirmed by the images
of President Dmitry Medvedev or Bill Clinton spontaneously strolling through Old
Quarter in Vietnam’s capital and talking with the friendly locals. The variety and
contrast in life rhythms amongst regions and cities within Vietnam can be
promoted as the tourist appeal. Whereas many energetic cities emerged as the
economic hub, there are rural regions that still maintain the tranquility or even not
get impacted by science technology. As suggested by Adam Bray, Vietnam can
base on many unique things like cuisine, French architecture legacy, Champa
culture, unique wildlife or hill tribe cultures to build the tourism brand.
Unfortunately, these characters of local culture and the recognized natural
heritages are not promoted to communicate a positive Vietnam’s image out to the
world. Significantly, Vietnam is the world’s second coffee exporter after Brazil, the
world’s second rice exporter after Thailand and among the world’s top exporters in
agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, and other things. These economic efforts are not
promoted properly and wasted in marketing aspect. Although there is no direct
 34

relation between these ranks and tourism, they are partly creating a positive image
of a country. And the country’s image always influences tourist choice to some
extent. A proper and creative positioning is a necessary task for Vietnam tourism
at this time for further development.

Beside the high evaluation and compliments for a changing Vietnam in many
aspects, there have been shortcomings for a long time that diminish Vietnam’s
image and affect tourism operation e.g. scamming the tourists. The shortcoming, if
not solved timely, might cause image crisis for a long term. Hence, in addition to
brand and core values creating, the country needs to take positive actions to
change reality. In order word, changing actual reality is the parallel action to the
efforts on building or changing a destination’s image (Beriatos&Gospodini 2004,
cited by Avraham&Ketter 2006, 117).

5.2 Visual designs

If image and core values of a brand are considered as the soul of the brand, logo
and slogan is the outside appearance of that brand. Logo and slogan - which are
created, written and design in a special shape, font, color with special effects,
borders or decorations - are indispensably visual design of brand. They support
brand recall and identification in consumer mind. It is necessary to keep a fixed set
of logo and slogan through a long time to embed them into consumer mind. They
are the basics needed to be done firstly associated with image positioning in
branding process. As Kotler, Haider and Rein (1993) describes that a good slogan
might be used through many years and campaigns; especially it can reflect vision
and spirit of a destination as well as creates enthusiasm and momentum. In
addition to slogan’s dependence on target market and marketing campaign’s goal,
the slogan must be at least in accordance with reality (cited by Avraham&Ketter
2006, 121). Last ten years of the first tourism’s marketing strategy, Vietnam
National Administration of Tourism did change slogan and logo totally three times:
“Welcome to Vietnam”, “Vietnam – Destination for the new millennium” and
“Vietnam – The hidden charm” since late 2005 (figure 5–1). Those slogans are
 35

generally unfocusedly used, compared to neighboring countries with “Amazing

Thailand”, “Uniquely Singapore”, “Your Singapore” (2011), “Malaysia, Truly Asia”,
“Infinitely Yours Seoul”, “Incredible India”, “Visit Indonesia” and “Wonderful
Indonesia” (2011), which are emphasized through many campaigns. The
inconsistency of Vietnam tourism’s slogan affects to tourism branding at a certain
extent. In observing other countries, especially Malaysia, they had used “Truly
Asia” for a long time and only add more subheading following the main slogan in
accordance with purpose and theme of each campaign, without completely
change into another one. That force people to memorize and trust the brand much
more than competitors. Actually, the slogans of vicinity countries are nothing
special, but they accompanied with creative and consistent advertising campaigns
that help them get into target’s mind easier.

In addition, Vietnam tourism’s logo is considered to be vague. Despite the good

idea of symbolizing the lotus, it is hard for foreigner to realize that it is a stylized
lotus and why it is a lotus. And for sure that very few foreigners know about the
deep meaning of lotus in spiritual and cultural life in Vietnam, because of lack of
culture promotion. Compared to Australia tourism’s logo, they are using a very
simple and familiar symbol: kangaroo. Everybody in the world knows Australia is a
famous land with kangaroo. Vietnam should push more in introduction Vietnam’s
culture into international public or another solution is changing into something
familiar to traveler, like the symbols and images mentioned above.

Five years ago Vietnam began to officially use the slogan “Vietnam – The hidden
charm”. It was good at that time. However, Vietnam is getting more and more
tourists in recent years, they need to have another slogan synchronic with new
strategy. Late 2010, the tourism administrators opened a contest in search for a
new slogan and logo for the next strategic period 2011 – 2015 and to get citizens
and companies involved in national tourism development. They finally found a new
one “Vietnam – A different Orient” designed by an Australian-invested branding
company (TuoiTre News, January 2011). Nonetheless, this slogan was not
favored and accepted from a part of locals. They were debating in online forums
 36

and news channels that there is a difference in meaning translation between

Vietnamese and English of this slogan (figure 7). And the colorful star symbol
could cause being mistaken with African countries (Vietnamnet, April 2011). This
slogan though won the first prize but not yet got approved to replace “Vietnam –
The hidden charm” for many reasons. It is time to have a flashy slogan and striking
logo then enclosed with a salient promotion campaign conveying a clear message
or else Vietnam tourism will still only be a “hidden” land to tourist. Besides,
Vietnam should create logo and slogan for each regions and cities in Vietnam to
introduce their distinctive characteristics. Every single region, province and city
has its own geography, cultural and traditional characteristics which should be
expressed and emphasized through their own logo and slogan. For example, Ho
Chi Minh City is a glaring one which is vibrant and a melting pot of culture due to
the migrations from other locals; but it has failed to market unique things it can
offer to tourists (Adam Bray). In other countries, each cities and provinces are
usually promoted with separate symbol and image based on their own strengths in
order to show the dramatic diversification and differences.

Figure 6: The official Vietnam tourism’s slogan and logo since 2005

Source: VNAT

Figure 7: The nominated slogan and logo for the period 2011 - 2015
 37

Source: TuoiTre News

In conclusion, branding for Vietnam at large and tourism in particular is the integral
activities for the strategic tourism development. A destination brand provides
tourist with trust, quality assurance and helps distinguish a destination from its
competitors. Tourism image and icon can originate from existed things a country
owns and requires advertising and promotion activities to gain brand awareness.

6 ADVERTISING

6.1 Advertising as a marketing tool

Advertising is one of the five main promotion activities accompanied with personal
selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing, that all constitutes a
company’s ‘marketing communications mix’, also known as ‘promotion mix’.
Because of the changing environment, fragmented mass media and highly
advanced technology, marketers have been searching for new promotion methods
as well as integrating them as a whole marketing mix to strongly get consumer’s
attention and enhance a consistent and compelling message. Advertising is an
intermediate bridge between supply and demand, or between producer and
consumer, and to switch a “mere commodity” into a “desirable brand” (Kornberger
2010, 65). McCabe (2009, 208) defines advertising as a “specific form of
marketing communication which is concerned with bringing information about an
organisation, its products and services, or any other messages to the attention of
 38

the market.” It is any paid-for communication in media aimed at the public.

Traditional media comprises television, radio, print newspaper and magazine, film
and poster sites; and modern media is based on Internet and digital technology
e.g. website and application. Advertising is acknowledged to be a good way to
create awareness, provide information, drive sales growth, remind the markets
about the organization, and also position the brand. Based on advertising
objectives, Kotler and Keller (2006, 569) classifies advertising into: informative,
persuasive, reminder, and reinforcement advertising. To determine the functions
and purpose of an advertising campaign is the very first and basic step to create
an advertisement. Concur with this view,Shimp (2007, 246–248) outlines a more
detailed categorization of advertising functions as follows:

Informing. Due to capability of reaching mass audiences at a relatively low cost

per exposure, advertising is one of the most significant communications to
publicize brands by introducing new brand or distinct features of existing brands,
increasing brand awareness, and communicating positive brand images.

Influencing. Advertising creates primary demand – the demand for an entire

product category, and more frequently, attempts to build secondary demand – the
demand for a company’s brand. It provides prospects with reasons and emotional
appeal for trying one brand over another.

Reminding. Advertising keeps a brand fresh and makes it more salient in

consumer mind. In other words, consumer will recall to or consider a brand when
they have purchase need. Moreover, advertising can lead to brand switching by
reminding consumer of availability of a brand that they have not purchased before.

Adding value. Advertising adds value to brands by influencing perception. Under

effective advertising’s impact, brand is affixed a personality and can generate
more sales volume, according to a claim by an advertising practitioner:
“Advertising builds brands. Brands build business. Let the discounted cash flow!”
 39

Assisting other company efforts. Advertising supports and enhances the

effectiveness of other marketing communications. For instance, it attracts attention
to a promotional program or makes a product package indentified.

Kotler, Wong, Saunders and Armstrong (2005, 762) say an effective advertising
can result in responses from target audiences; including perceptual response i.e.
consumer develops or alters specific opinions or feelings about the product or
brand and behavioral response e.g. consumer buys product for trial or increase
the amount. To get these positive responses, an advertisement needs to be
processed through other important decisions, that follow the objective setting
mentioned above, comprising of: budget setting, strategy development, and
advertising evaluation (Kotler et al. 2005, 763–777).

In scope of this thesis, the step of developing strategy will be discussed next with
two integral phases: advertising message design and media selection. Because
the content of advertising must be creative to attract people and generate the
expected responses. Plus, despite a well-created content, the conveyed message
may fail to provoke responses unless it is seen by right audience, at right time and
places. Moreover, this is one of the visible matters in Vietnam tourism marketing
that, to some extent, restricts the flow of tourism information, brand positioning and
traveler appeal to Vietnam.

Advertising is subdivided into specific forms in dependence upon media selection:

ambient advertising, press advertising, television advertising, radio advertising,
outdoor advertising, transport and outside transport advertising (Blythe 2000, 30).
Due to the fragmented mass media, advertising at different channels or places
could reach different kinds of audiences and at different moments. Television
advertising are watched mostly in the evening after work or at dinner time; while
outdoor advertising could draw attentions at crowded places; or transport
advertising can exploit empty spaces inside and outside means of transport, or at
stations, and is unavoidably seen; different types of magazines or newspapers can
reach more targeted markets. Among them, television advertising is known as the
 40

most powerful advertising medium because of its wide reach and thus low cost per
exposure. In respect of brand building, TV ad has two important strengths as
vividly demonstration of product attributes and dramatically portraying of user and
usage imagery and brand personality (Kotler& Keller 2006, 271). Furthermore,
Blythe agrees on TV ad’s effectiveness due to the widespread ownership, despite
the highly competitive context of media. He also emphasizes two brilliant
advantages of TV ad: realism – TV ads are possible to show the product in use in
a realistic scenario and receptivity; and receptivity – they are often seen as
entertainment as many are produced to high standard and interesting in their own
way (2000, 66–67).

With these features, TV ad is completely suitable to Vietnam tourism promotion

that can combine beautiful sights and sound effects to present Vietnam tourism to
the worldwide travelers. However, in respect of extensiveness and variety tourism
industry, tourism advertising commercials is more difficult to produce than other
FMCG sector.

6.2 The executed commercials of Vietnam tourism

In 2007 Vietnam broadcasted a television commercial on the international channel

CNN for the first time which cost nearly USD 300,000 and run within three
continual months. It was aired twice daily on CNN Asia showing montages from
Ha Long Bay, City of Ho Chi Minh , Hoi An and Hue. It is believed that that
campaign brought 4.2 million foreign tourists to Vietnam in 2008, but there were no
tools to measure this effectiveness (LookatVietnam, 2010). Then, in late April
2009, due to the fact that the world’s economic recession lowered travelling
demand, Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism launched another
commercial on the global BBC television channel with the payment of USD
204,000 for total 320 broadcasts of 30-second-spotfeaturing image of Ha Long
Bay. This campaign was aired in 20 weeks from May to July 2009 in which there
was 8 weeks in Asia and the Pacific, 6 weeks in Europe, and 6 weeks in America,
totally 200 countries across the globe twice daily at prime times.Apart from
 41

television advertisements, Vietnamese Ministry also advertised on taxies at

London streets (VOVnews, 2009). At the same year, Vietnam advertised on CNN
channel to draw more tourists from Japan. To support tourism promotion package
“Vietnam – Your destination”, Vietnam launched a clip on CNN in the third and
fourth quarter of 2010. This commercial cost about USD 270,000 making up 12%
of 2010’s tourism promotion budget (Vietnamnet, July 2010). This year 2011,
Vietnam was ordering BBC to completely produce and aired a new 15-second-
commercial promoting Vietnam as a tourism destination in July. It would be
broadcasted 260 times, three times per day in three months focusing on coastal
tourism and introducing various beaches from North to South of Vietnam. This
TVC aims at travelers from France, England, Holland, Northern Europe and
especially Russia. Meanwhile, four documentary films about Vietnam were
officially broadcasted on Discovery Channel at Asia and the Pacific. (Thanhnien,
June 2011).

6.2.1 Message design

In general valuation of Vietnam advertisements, the commercials expression was

verbose and less subtlety. The promotion video clips were like images united
carelessly that made a feeling of unfocused and pell-mell, according to The World
& Vietnam Report (December 2008). Each commercial of Vietnam tourism lasted
about 30 seconds with a voice-over to sing the praises of the country’s beautiful
scenes and cultures; and had nearly the same format and content though they
were produced in different periods and for different purposes. They all presented
the similar puppetry, daily life at outdoor market and afloat market, beaches,
highlands, ethnic minority, food and images of the Vietnamese. It is a waste of
money to repeat the same content over several advertisements without a key point
and cannot speak up creatively the differentiation of Vietnam tourism against
competitors. Moreover, Vietnam is known to be rich in cultural tradition and natural
landscapes, particularly beaches; however, they were not exploited to be
advertised in ads. Since tourism is a multi-faceted, the fleeting 30 seconds is
surely not long enough for Vietnam to present these all respects thoroughly; and
 42

also for audience to go through a process of pay attention – grasp information –

feel it – then, remember it and take action. From observing other countries, the
average duration for tourism commercial takes at least two minutes to display
major destinations as well as to be able to build a compelling plot with high
convincingness. Furthermore, Vietnam’s commercials just simply introduced
landscapes, traditional entertainment or local dishes which might be viewed as the
same as other Asian countries in foreigner’s eyes. Besides beautiful landscape
and unique culture, it is better to show what travelers would get when they made a
holiday to somewhere. In other words, it is fundamentally to find out what is the
other purposes or motivations to decide someplace for holiday whereas there are
many choices floating around and they are all nearly the same. In scope of tourism
segmentation approaches, McCabe (2009, 175) indicates to link motivations to
benefits sought from the experience. That is to say the approach of benefit
segmentation is based on the reasons for a trip. Moreover, as stated by Kotler et
al. (2005, 803), the purpose of advertising is to get attention and response from
target audience. To reach this purpose, no matter what forms of advertising are,
they should have a general message to communicate to customer. And the
customer will react to the advertisements only if they believe benefits that the
advertised product or service can bring to them. Hence, identifying benefits to
target audiences is a key step in message strategy to create advertising appeal
which must be meaningful, believable and distinctive (Kotler et al., 2005).

One of the strongest motivations of all individual travel is simply to satisfy a need
for pleasure. The romance and pleasure of the trip can be the elements to make
the trip to be a fine medium through which additional pleasure, appreciation and
romance are experienced. Thus, the aspect of pleasure found in a trip needs
emphasizing in the formulation of marketing campaigns and advertising clips
(Goeldner& Ritchie 2003, 266). Researching on TVCs of other countries in region,
Malaysia and Singapore Tourism Board has employed this kind of appeal to build
promotion clips. In Malaysia’s advertisements, the ads were divided into different
themes: romance, family moment, memories revision, relationship improvement,
namely ‘Boss to Dad’ featuring about a businessman dad who gets rid of busy job
 43

to spend leisure time with his son, ‘Husband to Friend’ regarding a married couple
who travels to Malaysia to revise their date-memories and has a fresh feeling
toward each other, ‘Made in Malaysia’ talking about a couple beginning their
relationship at Malaysia then this time they’re back to Malaysia to enjoy the trip
with a new family member - their son. The TVCs were built cleverly upon a simple
plot based on these themes and stroke on audience’s psychology and emotion
and make them believe that they would get benefits or they would also be like that
if they make a trip to Malaysia. Similarly, a tourism campaign of Singapore
launched in March 2004 was very successful and won a golden award from PATA,
notified by Channel NewsAsia. This advertising campaign built two main
commercials upon romance theme, talking a story of two young people meeting up
by chance and experience Singapore together, and family theme, spinning around
enjoyment of a mother and her daughter and enlightening entertainment activities
at Singapore. While most of Asian countries have similar landscape and cultures,
the distinction is created upon these benefits or stories each country can make up
to attract tourists. Furthermore, because of the expensive cost and cluttered
environment of advertising world, nowadays TVC not only provides information but
also should have entertainment values to be rewarding to consumer.

In addition to benefit segmentation as above, Malaysia created commercials

particularly for market segmentations with different languages, designs, character
casts, etc. In targeting the countries of West Asia in 2008, Malaysia launched the
‘Made in Malaysia’ commercial in Arabic language. Likewise, to draw Japanese
tourists, Malaysia made a Japanese anime-styled commercial which featured the
animated Malaysian girl introducing about Malaysia in Japanese language. By this
way, it helps target audiences easily get Malaysia tourism information and have
familiar feeling towards Malaysia.

In brief, Vietnam tourism should invest more in production of tourism commercials

with different video clips including aspects of culture and tradition, relaxation,
luxury, adventurous and sport activities, nature discovery or UNESCO heritages.
Owing to the fact that tourism is the largess industry and people have different
 44

purpose to travel, this advertisement division can help introduce completely,

clearly and creatively what Vietnam possesses to the world’s travelers.

6.2.2 Message performance

The impact of advertising depends not only on the message content but also on
the way it is expressed. It should be harmonious combination of style, tone, words
and format to execute the message (Kotler et al., 804). Because of the nature of
tourism advertising, it should be less statement voice and more sound effects, for
example a song composed for only country tourism or the sound of a country’s
traditional instrument, along with beautiful scenes to give a space for audience to
focus on the images on screen. A marketing journal on the effect of music
background in ads released in October 1993 also underlined the prominent feature
of music in advertising. Audiences can transfer their feeling of the background
music to the advertised product because they are in pair in the ad. Additionally,
music can help support product evaluations and message reception due to its
attention-gaining value and music-message congruency (Kellaris, D. Cox and
Dena Cox, 1993). As an illustration, Uniquely Singapore campaign was much
more known with the song Uniquely You which was composed for Singapore
tourism promotion only in 2004 and spread over YouTube. Another example on
employing music effect should be referred to Malaysia whose nice song “Ordinary
Day” written especially for a tourism commercial of theirs with beautiful melody
and memorable lyrics or using the traditional Malaysian musical theme mix in the
eco-tourism commercial in 2007.

Furthermore, a suitable style, memorable and attention-drawing words should be

used to intensify effectiveness of the ads. It is also related to the matter of
consistency in slogan and message as mentioned in previous part. There is a less
emphasis and extreme confusion on Vietnam tourism message in the
commercials. Despite the slogan Vietnam – The Hidden Charm officially used
until today, the four commercials had different messages: “Vietnam – The hidden
charm” in 2007, “Charming Vietnam” in 2009, and “Vietnam – Your Destination” in
 45

2010. For instance, Hong Kong tourism’s slogan – “Hong Kong: Live it. Love it!” –
was intensively stressed in its commercial by using lots of words, whose format
are similar to the slogan, such as Feel it, See it, Wear it, Taste it, Win it, Rock it,
Swing as if the invitations to worldwide tourists to come and experience it. Or
Malaysia accentuated the slogan “Malaysia – Truly Asia” in each commercial of
2011 by clinging to the word ‘Asia’ at taglines to depict Malaysia’s notable tourism
aspects as well as to highly support for Malaysia’s message, for instance:
Malaysia – Your Blissful Escape Asia, Your Glitz & Glamour Asia, Your Multi-
Cultural Asia, and Your Nature Adventure Asia. (All tourism commercials
mentioned in this part are available on Youtube Channel)

On the whole, the very first steps to have an effective advertising commercial are
to design a message strategy which firstly, is in harmony with the whole tourism
message; secondly, is designed based on segmentations including benefit or
motivation segmentations and apposite to target markets; thirdly, has creative
message execution with music background, information display or other
technology effects.

6.2.3 Media selection

Another matter of Vietnam tourism is related to media selection which is also the
important stage in advertising production. To a certain extent, the decision upon
the media to carry the message will influence advertising budget and determine a
campaign’s success. There are some protest opinions against launching tourism
commercials on CNN and BBC channels of Vietnam in recent years for the
reasons that these channel’s audiences are mainly interested in politics –
economics issues rather than culture – travel whereas Thailand and Malaysia
chose to advertise on sport channel ESPN, Star Sports (Datviet News, 2009).
Additionally, the broadcast on CNN in 2009, which was said to target potential
tourists from the Republic of Korea, Japan and China, was not effective because
tourists from these markets mostly did not see English channel, according to
Luxurytravelvietnam.com. Also in 2009, apart from advertising on BBC television
 46

channel, Vietnam spent a sum of money to advertising on 27 taxis in London

within 6 months with the image of Vietnamese lady in traditional costume standing
on Ha Long Bay and the slogan Charming Vietnam (VOVNews, 2009). This might
be a good way to grab people’s attention; however, it is also a waste of money
since there are totally 10.000 taxies in London. Actually, to explain for that media
selection is due to the lack of promotion budget. Each year Thailand spends about
USD 100 million, Malaysia USD 118 million, or Singapore USD 70 million into
tourism promotion; whereas Vietnam tourism’s budget is about more than USD
1,75 million in 2011. In 2008, the advertising budget of Malaysia tourism made up
46% of the total, calculated upon Malaysia’s local daily The New Straits Times
(August 2008). It showed how significant advertising is to Malaysia’s marketing
activities to boost up tourism brand and sales. Therefore, besides the need of
designing and producing much better commercials, Vietnam should pay more
attention to media selection to get a higher effectiveness.

In conclusion, promoting tourism thorough video clips are very best way to
introduce beauties of country to the world in which it can combine sight and sound
effects creatively. Although television advertising is a good marketing channel to
introduce products and reach a large amount of audiences, it seems to be hardly
measureable on reach and frequency rate, especially when the target market is
abroad. Recently, television costs has been soaring up along with audiences has
more choices in term of both television channel and media entertainment thanks
for advanced technologic science, marketers has been revising to shift their media
selection on other channels to get more and right audiences. For this reason, to
date, internet marketing, or online marketing, has become more prevalent and
widely applied in many sector generally and tourism industry in particular.

7 INTERNET MARKETING

7.1 Internet’s benefits for tourism communication

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Information technology has brought new convenience to people and plenty of

opportunities and challenges to business. One of these conveniences is the
appearance and growth of the Internet and now becomes a popular mean of
communication globally. There were 1.97 billion internet users worldwide in 2010.
This number kept increasing to approximately 2,095,006,005 users spreading over
regions in the world by the end of March 2011, as presented in figure 8. Asia is
leading the world’s Internet usage with 44%; European internet users account for
23% and America areas, both North and Latin America included, constitute 24% of
the world’s Internet usage (Internet World Stats, 2011). They are also the main
tourism markets in the world, in term of inbound and outbound travel, as
mentioned in previous parts. Two decades ago, firms had kept wondering which
cost-effective way is to approach a large number of customers, both domestic and
abroad, in a short time until the ubiquitousness of Internet since mid-1990s.
Internet has become a central part of everyday life at a speedy pace and
surprisingly, then rapidly changed consumer habits. However, the commercial use
of Internet only possibly grows in accordance with the parallel development of
technological products. The integration of Internet and high-tech products led to
the age of information and communications technology (ICT in short) like
nowadays. The powerful influence of ICT on nearly every aspect of marketing, for
both product and service, is undeniable. Further, when the decisive role of
traditional communication tools has declined recently due to the increasing clutter
environment of mass media, marketers began to make use of online marketing
which can communicate to target audiences in a short time, at large-scale, low
cost and by effective ways. Internet marketing is summarized as “the effective
promotion of goods and services through the medium of an interactive
computerized information channel and the enhancement of existing customer
information for the purpose of refining an integrated marketing strategy”, by
Meldrum and McDonald (2007, 58). Tourism is a unique business and one of the
industries that got influenced from Internet most. Back in past decades, most
tourism products were sold directly through travel agencies: flight ticket,
destination choice, vacation package, accommodation booking and car rental.
The purchase process are handled through travel agents and cost varied fees. As
 48

the e-commercial tools appeared, everything seems to be much easier for

travelers and beneficial to travel firms and national tourist organizations.

Figure 8: Internet users by regions by March 31, 2011

1%

3% Asia
5%
Europe
11 %
North America
44 % Latin America/Caribbean

13 % Africa
Middle East
Oceania/ Australia

23 %

Source: Data collected from Internet World Stats

The initial benefits of Internet and technology growth is to travel companies for the
increase in effective communication and improvement in operation process such
as distribution, booking, tour management, targeted segment approaching and so
forth. E-commerce gives firms a new distribution channel and savings from labor
cost. To customers, the widespread adoption of the Internet and useful search
engines make it easier for them to select a good deal over a wide selection of tour
operators or make a comparison about accommodation price and flight fares in
several simple steps (Middleton, Fyall, Morgan&Ranchhod 2009, 250). Even,
travelers now can handle trip preparations themselves through websites without
paying fee to agencies. Especially, for tourism boards, this is surely a low cost and
effective platform to communicate their destination’s brand personality to the
world. Since the convenience, opportunities and also competitiveness arise from
Internet, the tourism and hospitality organizations and entrepreneurs pay an
enormous attention on Internet marketing which will bring about profitability and
 49

brand reputation if being executed thoroughly. This is also a necessity to Vietnam

tourism case. There are many debates spinning around the expenditure of
Vietnam tourism’s marketing budget. Instead of using Internet as a strategic
marketing tool, they have been pouring a big proportion of their limited budget into
mass advertising on the expensive international broadcasts. Along with identifying
tourism demands in key markets and improving service quality, Vietnam should
take more advantage of the Internet to improve the effectiveness of promotion
campaigns, suggested by Gaël de La Porte duTheil – President of Interface
Tourism Group, a leading Tourism PR and Marketing Group for Southern Europe,
Russia and Arabia (Tourism Information Technology Center, January 2010). Plus,
Vietnam’s official information website does not fit for purpose because of its being
outdated, weak accessibility, not user-friendly (Adam Bray). According to Google’s
statistics, more than 98% of people perform information searching before making a
tour purchase. Since 2010 to the first months of 2011, there were averagely
600,000 – 800,000 searches for resorts at Vietnam through Internet and more than
1 million in the peak season. And the need for hotel findings reached 2–3 million
times per month. Exceptionally, searching for holiday tours accounted the highest
rate of 5–7 million per month (Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism of Lao Cai
province, April 2011). These giant numbers partly stresses out the need of
information through Internet and potentials of Internet marketing for tourism.

7.2 Rebuilding the official tourism site

The official tourism website is the official tourist information channel of a nation.
Hence, it needs to be focused and updated frequently to assure the exact and
timely information source for tourist and to be a platform for tourism board to
communicate with prospective tourists.

7.2.1 User-friendly content and design

The main purposes of tourism board’s website are as an information source and a
marketing channel for the tourism of the whole country. In addition to lay out
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design, usability also contributes to the website’s success. Website is meant to be

a pull rather than push medium for the reason that customer has to seek for
information and make a comparison among a multitude of travel-related sites on
the Internet. Thus, communication features are considered to be vital to a site’s
success, as outlined by Middleton et al. (2009, 262). Currently, Vietnam’s tourism
information system on Internet is constituting of three main types of sources: the
official website of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT); the official
websites of each provincial administration, some provinces or cities have their own
tourist websites and some shares with the site of Department of Commerce; and
the enterprise websites of tour operators, hotels, etc.

The official tourism website of Vietnam www.vietnamtourism.com was established

in 1997. From this website, there are three addresses linked to
www.vietnamtourism.gov.vn containing information of tourist boards,
Governmental Decisions; tourism development strategies, statistics, tourism
bulletin; www.dulichvn.gov.vn with news in tourism and hospitality industry,
Vietnamese culture, travel guide and some upcoming events and festivals,
www.vietnamtourism-info.com named Tourism Information Technology Center
having similar contents as the previous site. These sites are not in English as
default and even though they have sufficiently basic contents for tourist such as
culture, weather, news, promotion, events etc., they are complicated, confusing
and generally not user-friendly. They might be kind of old-fashioned, tedious and
uninspiring due to lack of interactive features, spectacular gallery and exciting
content. Viewing the tourism sites of some countries as reference, the first
impression to users is from stunning pictures with a brand identity throughout the
site. Then, the necessary information is arranged in a logic order that is completely
not embarrassing to users and let them focus on beautiful pictures before seeking
information. One of the 25 immutable rules of successful tourism is the necessary
“wow” appeal in photography that could evoke viewer’s emotion and inspire them
with a journey. Photography should play a key role and creatively illustrated in
brochure, public relations efforts and especially on the web (University of
 51

Wisconsin–Extension, April 2004). Despite of Vietnam’s pride for heritages and

nature, there are few images shown off on the site.

As the primary function of tourism websites is information source and brand

communication to user. Hence, the basic issues on content should be of
importance, including information about countries, regions and tourism
categorization and any travel-related tourism that is useful to user. However, for
the purpose of marketing, most sites are building contents about place branding
attractively rather than simply informing. Vietnam’s culture shares commons with
other Asian countries that are rich in culture, history and religion. So the stories,
history, legends or myths around a place can be told to foreign tourists to create a
mysterious value for that place. What’s more, in realm of destination branding, a
story of a place can be uniquely told for branding and memorizing in tourist’s mind.
In introduction about tourist place, the detailed information on temperature, local
festivals, etc. should be carefully posted, especially the location on map and
transport guide that are still lack on Vietnam’s site. Such guides will be very helpful
to backpackers because lots of confuses about transport timetable inside
Vietnam’s cities were asked in the travel forum Virtual Tourist. Moreover, Vietnam
is now on the way to become a global tourist destination, it is necessary to set
more languages on the site, apart from the current Vietnamese, English, Chinese,
Japanese and French setting, for better communication with different tourist
nationalities. Most of other tourism sites has more than 10 languages and also
automatically detects the user’s location, then display the appropriate language.

7.2.2 Enhancing supporting features

At present, Vietnam’s official tourism site is still missing an advanced support

function to users. Instead of finding a list of hotels and services by a modest
search box, it is better to present them on a full and detailed categorization that
can help users find exactly and easily which accommodation fits them. For
example, in the official Australia tourism site, they created a page called Come
Walkabout Planner for “exploring Australia in spectacular ways with journey tools”.
 52

Basically, this is an improved categorization system in an interactive ways,

including Australia tourism category by destination, display of location on map,
picture, suggestion of different travel routes with activities suitable to trip lengths,
and especially the ‘download this journey’ button and tourist even can view this
planner program from mobile application. This kind of support functions as ‘trip
planner’ is becoming popular and important on tourist sites that help users in
planning and give recommendations suitable to users’ needs. Alongside with the
helpfulness, it shows a good customer service and, to some extent, encourages
users’ decision making.

The tourism site will be more useful with the provision of detailed brochure that
user can download them for travel use. Some sites supply a full collection of
brochure categorized in different aspects. In the Paris travel guide site, there is a
collection of online publications with topics: Paris city map-guide, Paris For You,
Good Food Guide, Paris Shopping Book, Visiting Paris, Accommodation in Paris,
Paris - an accessible city and “Districts of Paris” Collection. All of them are
available in many languages, updated every two years and free for download
(Official website of the Convention and Visitors Bureau – Paris info). Another
largely applied tactic for Internet marketing is e-newsletter, also known as e-
bulletin, which is periodic publication distributed by email and used to
communicate with readers. Its content may comprise of corporate, product or
service announcement, press release, and coupons (Webopedia). E-newsletter
subscription is now used largely in tourism; for example, Canada’s official tourism
site encourages people to subscribe for monthly e-newsletter which keeps traveler
up-to-date with events happening in Canada. Apart from the usefulness, a well-
designed periodical e-newsletter might evoke the travel passion and inspire for a
trip. Plus, thanks to Internet convenience, business now can reduce the printing
and publishing cost for such marketing materials. At present there are several
brochures about Vietnam travel sold on the official site. But for sure, few travelers
are willing to pay for that kind of brochure because of multitude of travel guide
uploaded and for free use on the Internet. What’s more, some tourism board sites
also provide business kit for tour operators. For example, when Australia Tourism
 53

Board launched the campaign, it also offers “the largest ever range of free tools for
the industry to use” consisting of campaign logo and tagline, ad template, digital
postcards and wallpaper, artwork for poster and flyer, newsletter template and
image gallery. Additionally, it supplies an accessible resource with tutorials and
guides e.g. Tourism e-kit, Making a splash – guide to working with media, or
Image Selection Advice. Those supports to local tour operators, on one hand, can
help them get more tour purchase by marketing improvement. On the other hand,
it gets the local tour operators involved in the nation’s unanimous campaign so the
tourism brand is promoted comprehensively. Due to the lack of these supports,
Vietnam tourism is still in the situation that the travel companies promote
Vietnam’s tourism brand in different positioning themselves to sell tour packages.
Plus, market research is very expensive to small and medium tour enterprises;
Vietnam Tourism Board should provide a detailed market reports instead of simple
statistics of international arrivals each month. With the in-depth travel data, each
tour provider can build a marketing plan and tailor travel products that meet
different segments and niches.

The technology growth has been opening an era of information and

communications technology which is advantageous and expedient to business in
many industries. Since the birth of the Iphone and Ipad, the mobile phone
manufacturers have been more competitive in the race to invent the latest smart-
phones and tablet computers. The large adoption of new high-tech means of
communications also brings to many business and marketing promise. Business
begins to build the mobile applications (‘app’ in short) which are software
developed for small low-power handheld devices. Such applications help raise the
accessibility and convenience to consumers. Recently this technology has been
even applied in tourism and hospitality industry. Singapore Tourism Board jointly
with American Express, Singapore Airlines, and StarHub launched the
“YourSingapore Guide” app to “help visitors explore Singapore on the go by
enabling visitors to access the latest and most essential information about
Singapore such as attractions, shopping deals, dining options, and events, all at
their fingertips”. Visitors can enjoy tools like location-based service, attractive
 54

privileges provided through the partners and share their holiday experiences via
social media, as presented by Singapore Tourism Board (25 August 2011). Also
catching up this trend, Australia launched “There’s nothing like Australia” app
which is available in Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English and it has the
function similar to Singapore’s one, stressing on the sharing and searching
features.

7.2.3 User-generated content

One of the online activities that has the power to draw people’s attention is related
to user-generated content in specifically ‘blogs’ (short for ‘web-logs’). It is a
webpage consisting of a series of entries arranged in reverse chronological order,
frequently updated with new information about particular topics in a particular point
of view (SOA, 2000). It is also viewed as the very first form of interaction and
sharing activity online. To travel sector, many tourist blogs and forum for sharing
travel experiences has risen more and more. These kinds of information are
thought to be more credible due to the trip reviews, rating systems for places and
accommodations, recommendations and tips are shared by real travelers. To
marketers, it is an informal communication means and has impact in areas of
branding, relationship management and cost reduction (McCabe 2009, 271).
Moreover, there is a great development of social networking pages that has ability
to connect people from all around the world and thus, sharing is much easier
through such extensive connection network. It seems to be no distances
nowadays thanks to these online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube,
Myspace and so on. Cite Facebook as example, currently there are more than 750
million active users, average users has 130 friends and more than 30 billion pieces
of content including web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc. shared
each month. Plus, every month more than 250 million people engage with
Facebook on external websites. Since social plugins launched, more than 2.5
million websites have integrated with Facebook (Facebook Statistics, last
accessed on 12 September 2011). Those huge numbers partly points out the
power of social media and online community in user habits and marketing
 55

activities. In realization of this advantage, almost countries integrated this function

into their official tourist guide sites or create contest based on the idea of sharing.
This is the out-dated shortcoming to Vietnam tourism marketing and surprisingly,
there is no button linked to any social networking found on the official site. When
searching in Facebook with the key word ‘Vietnam tourism’, it lists out several
pages with that name but nothing is the official and corporate page of the tourist
board.

In Canada’s official tourism website, there is a part ‘Canada Keep Exploring’

whose purposes are to get Canadians engaged in their national tourism promotion
by encouraging them to tell what they did last summer and recommend for the
international visitors (http://au.canada.travel/). It links to the Canada Tourism
Commission’s official Facebook page which has supports and participations in
reviewing holidays from nearly 75 thousand Canadians and international travelers.
The same as Canada, there is the invitation for joining Facebook community to get
exclusive travel giveaways, deals and much more on French Government tourist
guide site (http://us.franceguide.com/). This page is frequently updated with photos
and comments and gets more than 14 thousand page view for the first year.
Another example, Australia is build a complete sharing and interactive page for
travelers to share thoughts and photos from their holidays. It is also related to its
ongoing campaign ‘There’s nothing like Australia’. People are encouraged to tell
everyone what unique thing they think nowhere else except Australia has, from
their own experience. All the photos are hung on Australia’s map interactively in
eye-catching design. Until now it have had 3498 experiences shared on the page
nothinglikeaustralia.com since its release in March 2010. And Finland has the
same success on tourism promotion with the campaign ‘I wish I was in Finland’ in
Facebook community with 23,555 ‘like’ (the Facebook’s unique function for users
to express their feeling of enjoy and liking). This page is especially promoted and
most crowded in summer, the tourist season of most European countries.
Especially, the information on Facebook is easily approached than on traditional
website due to updating features. Hence, this is a best place to update upcoming
events and festivals to remind people or to launch new campaign.
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More creatively, some countries exploit the spread-over phenomenon of Internet to

run promotion programs by organizing web-based contests or competitions.
Tourism promotions based on website or social community is related to
relationship and brand awareness building, and usually aimed at target markets.
Sometimes, it is to draw tourists in off-season too. For example, at present
Australia tourism is running a competition to promote its adventure tourism aimed
at the youth segment in United Kingdom, Ireland and Dutch with a pretty big prize
(Australia Working Holiday on Facebook, last accessed on 12 September 2011).
Or to promote eco-tourism, Malaysia runs a small questionnaire in which people
joins to answer can luckily win a cool Malaysia Tourism Goodies for only India
market (Tourism Malaysia on Facebook, last accessed on 12 September 2011).

In short, the development of social networking and spreading speed on the

Internet is a suitable channel to perform marketing campaign effectively. Vietnam
tourism needs to carry out such competitions and contests to spread over brand
awareness. This activity, firstly, can aim at a target market abroad, or secondly,
can aim at domestic market in order to get them involved in national tourism.
Alongside with rebuild and re-decorate the website design and content, integrating
some new applications, features and interesting user-generated content will surely
help to attract more people surf in the website and to raise brand awareness
amongst Vietnamese youths and foreign travelers. Furthermore, as mentioned in
the previous part on the large expenditure into mass advertising on international
channels such as BBC, CNN, podcasting on social media like Youtube seems to
be forgotten in Vietnam tourism case. A statistics shows that there was more than
13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010 and over 3 billion videos are
viewed a day (Youtube Statistics, last accessed on 12 September 2011). With the
wonderful advantages of Internet and social media discussed throughout this part,
they are also a cheap and even free media channel to introduce Vietnam tourism
images.

7.2.4 Affiliate marketing

 57

As website is used as advertising channel and displaying advertising on other

websites, in forms of banners or pop-ups, is ubiquitous in most websites. But
sometimes it can cause intrusion to customers and reduce brand quality if the
advertised brands (the brands on banner) are not qualified and trusted. Affiliate
marketing is another subtle and targeted online marketing. This is about placing a
link on a business’ website rewarding other affiliates for visitors; and these
affiliates also put that site’s link on their own sites. For instance, the affiliate
networks between the low-cost airlines EasyJet and companies offering hotel, car
rental, etc. Along with financial service, retail, mobile phone, travel sector spends
much on affiliate marketing (Middleton et al. 2009, 263). There should be
something in common amongst the company, affiliate partners and user’s interest.
This online marketing strategy involved in revenue sharing between online
advertisers and online publishers based on performance measures e.g. click onto
the link (American Association Marketing). However, it needs to clarify that affiliate
marketing differs from banner advertising, especially on the case of Vietnam site
where abundant of advertising banners appear on VNAT’s site. It should limit the
affiliate network with trusted tour providers, qualified hotels and other travel-related
companies. To small travel agencies, this is a key strategic marketing by creating
a partner network that helps cost-saving on marketing budget. Affiliate marketing
only works well when the affiliate is a reliable business and has the same target
segments or niche. Trusted partners can offer “flexible and speedy value-added
products and services” and networking gives business opportunities to outsource
the non-specialized functions (Buhalis& O’Connor 2006, 206).

Creating a collaborative destination site is a dynamic level of affiliate marketing

that can share marketing burdens and growth a whole destination. A very good
example is on AITO, an organization representing over 150 members of Britain’s
specialist tour operators. Those members are independent companies majoring in
particular destinations and holiday types with the common aim of providing the
highest level of customer satisfaction on choice, quality and service. Through
AITO portal, customers can search completely for travel ideas, destination choice,
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entertainment and accommodation without confusion and much time-consuming

for searching around the Internet, according to Middleton et al. (2009, 254).

7.3 Commercial websites

To tourism and hospitality enterprises e.g. tour operator, accommodation provider,

the main purpose of website is more significant for business operation. After
customers make a choice of destination for their holiday, it jumps to the stage of
selecting vacation provider, accommodation, transport service, so forth.
Specifically, website is a competitive tool for small and medium tour firms and
hoteliers due to the competitiveness in Vietnam’s tourism and hospitality
environment nowadays. Here are common objectives that should be outlined by
tour companies for their websites, recommended by Susan Sweeney (2008, 3–4)

- Advertising travel-related products, services and destinations

- Selling vacation packages and travel-related products
- Providing customer service and support
- Providing destination, travel-related product and corporate information
- Establishing brand identity and awareness

Apart from the issues mentioned above for a tourism site as far as design, content,
advanced features or applications and commerce tools are concerned, enterprise
websites principally needs to take notice on several must-have criteria on
commercial sites such as: price transparency, online specials, diversified tourism
offerings, simple purchase stages. The price transparency and diversified offerings
gives users more choices and comparison between tour providers. The online
specials is meant to be an added-value to Internet users that encourages them to
make transaction directly online and get some special offer only valid for online
transactions. For example, when people buy a tour package directly on the site,
they can get a discount or coupon on buying travel-related products like
accommodation, vehicle rental. The purchase process is also kept simple, quick
and trustworthy that can encourage people to perform transactions directly online.
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Online transaction means a lot to business due to the better management process,
cost reduction in terms of material and manpower and ability of approaching far-
away customer. After building a good commercial site, business has to find a path
to promote their sites. The key communications for tourism site should comprise of
traditional mass media such as travel magazine, newspaper, billboards and
television; distribution of brochures and specific magazines; online media like
advertising on Search Engine e.g. Google Adwords; Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) and link exchange amongst a wide range of travel sites. The most common
way for user to find information is through search engine on Internet, for instance,
the active search tool on Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL. According from Google’s
statistical tool, in the most recent 5 years, the need of searching travel information
online at Vietnam rose more than 32 times. Averagely there were more than 5
million searches about travel in Vietnamese and even more than 8 million in the
peak season. Due to the personalization and interaction, online advertising is
clearly a cost-saving and more targeted advertising for entrepreneurs. Another
thing is that the tourism and hospitality websites should have promotion programs
accordance with the current campaign of the national tourist board to get
destinations branded comprehensively and strongly. The simplest action is to
promote Vietnam tourism in the same brand identity such as logo, slogan and
marketing-related artworks. Moreover, to get new customers and have repeated
visits, it needs to have some elements like coupons, special offers and tailored
tours for travelers, especially in the off-season. It’s good for tourism and hospitality
entrepreneurs establish a network of partners in order to offer more services and
promotions to tourists. Finally, to small business, website could be used as an
effective tool for market research and customer database collection.

7.4 Information and feedback

Beside the huge benefits from Internet marketing, there are of course several
issues that tourism marketer needs to take notice. Firstly, the problem with user-
generated content is equally the lack of control, and the presentation of
information coming from a wide range of diversified perspectives might not be
 60

filtered thoroughly. It may damage the trustworthiness of travel agency or

destination. Secondly, if the customer’s online information and comments are well-
processed, they would be a source of research and database to develop the
tourism. For example, on the traveler forum named Thetravelforum.org, several
members, who had just been back from a holiday in Vietnam, was complaining
about the service quality of a tour operator in Ha Long Bay. So a system of
information management should be built to process feedback and comment and to
solve problems timely. For example, VNAT can establish advanced information
management system in the official site and encourage travelers to give their
feedback and comments in all aspect of tourism industry. The purpose is to collect
feedback as customer research and to solve problems or dissatisfaction.

In conclusion for this part, while Vietnam tourism industry has not yet exploit
maximum the power of Internet, many tourism organizations in the regional
neighboring countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia… are using largely it as
an effective communication tools. Online marketing can be directed as providing
information, raising brand awareness, calling to action e.g. making a purchase or
requesting information. The Internet and communication technology gives more
opportunities to promote a destination and reach targeted segments and niche.
Alongside with rebuilding Vietnam’s official tourism site, it should keep it up-to-date
with interesting information and promotion program to attract tourist and gain
repeated visit. Because the official tourism site should be the main source of all
tourism news and guide. Plus, it needs to well serve not only for travelers but also
for local enterprises in tourism and hospitality industry. Besides, the tourism and
hospitality entrepreneurs should notice on building their sites not only for
commercial purpose and promoting their own brands, but also for marketing the
whole Vietnam’s tourism brand. Finally, taking care of information and feedback on
Internet is of extremely importance to Vietnam’s tourism. The rampancy and
coverage of information on Internet is both the good and the bad for business; so
dissatisfaction and problems of customers should be eased timely to avoid the bad
word-of-mouth to the whole tourism brand.
 61

8 TOURISM PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND NICHE

FOCUS

Product innovation encompasses a range of activities of developing products,

including product improvement, entirely new product development, and extensions
so as to increase the current number of product lines. The product development
requires a process of identifying, creating and delivering new values or benefits to
the customers. The key elements contributing to product success are, on one
hand, the development of a unique superior product that gives customer better
quality, new features and higher value in use; and a well-defined product concept
prior to development. On the other hand, due to increasing market fragmentation,
it is better for companies to concentrate on smaller segments and niche of special
interest rather than mass market. New products will succeed only when it can offer
unique benefits and differences for customers (Kotler, Wong, Saunders &
Armstrong (2005, 582–586). Similar to other business sectors, tourism products
are the core for a destination’s tourism operation. The industry needs to keep
developing and delivering various attractions and activities to make up a
diversified tourism products that meet all tourist’s needs and expectations.

Figure 8–1: Vietnam’s rank in Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008–
2011 compared to some Asian countries

2008 2009 2011

Singapore 16 10 10

Malaysia 32 32 35

Thailand 42 39 41

Philippines 81 86 94

Vietnam 96 89 80

Indonesia 80 81 74

Source: Data collected from World Economic Forum

 62

According to the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index presented by World

Economic Forum (2009, 2011), Vietnam continuously raised in ranking from 96th in
2008 to 89th in 2009, and jumped to 80th over 139 countries. This is a proper result
from much efforts of tourism improvement in last years. However, Vietnam has
been still lagging from the direct competitors like Malaysia or Thailand, as viewed
in the figure 8–1, though Vietnam has more the world’s natural heritage wonders
than competitors and culture and nature as rich as theirs. What’s more, Vietnam
has only 15% of repeated visitors; it is too few compared to the giant competitor
Thailand. One of the reasons for this disappointed result is of the monotonous and
low quality tourism products (Ha NoiMoi, September 2011). Searching around the
tour products on the websites of three popular tour operators in Vietnam
(Saigontourist Travel Service, Fiditour and Vietnam ANZ Travel), the holiday
programs are mainly about beach and island holiday, heritages sightseeing,
cultural and historical sites, biodiversity tourism (trekking, cycling tour,
adventurous and sport tours (motorbike tours, diving) and luxury tour (resort relax,
golf, cruise tour); and concentrated on the most popular destinations. Vietnam
tourism’s advantage is the nature-based beauties lying the country length and a
long lasting cultural and historical background. However, stunning natural beauty
or common cultural sightseeing are not the only factors that creates tourism
success. To inspire tourists to lengthen their stays and return more in the future,
VN tourism needs the creativity and up-to-dating to innovate and develop tourism
products in order to continuously offer tourists new experiences and surprising
exploration about Vietnam. The growing concerns over the global issues such as
climate change, global warming, oil price increase, economic downturn have
changed traveling styles, trends and attitudes. These changing values lead to a
demand for new tourism products and provide a driving force for the development
of new types of tourism. Beside the prevalence and resilience of traditional tour
packages that is the combination of tour sightseeing and relaxation through many
destinations at a country, there is a trend of “new tourism” arisen and affirmed to
continue growing. It is called responsible tourism, also known as sustainable,
green, alternative or soft tourism. Reisinger predicted that the new types of
tourism, consisting of cultural tourism; health, wellness and spa; nature-based;
 63

educational; wildlife; geo-; genealogic; gastronomic or food and wine;

photographic; volunteer; virtual; experiential; space; ethical or moral; community;
and para tourism, would has a growth potential and affects the global tourism in
this decade. The tourism industry is transforming itself from focusing on the mass
market to aiming at diversifying products and catering to individual tourist’s needs
(2009, 13). Supplementing to the current mass tourism market, tailoring new
segment and especially focusing on niche market can help Vietnam diversify and
expand tourism product line and tourist profiles.

8.1 Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions tourism

MICE is abbreviation for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions. It is a

particular type of tourism for a large group, usually a business or organization,
brought to particular place for a combined purpose of meeting or conference
attendance and travel. The tourist group of MICE is usually in large quantity with
higher expenditure than other normal tourist groups. Thus, this tourism type is
becoming promoted and extremely beneficial to tourism industry. Asia is still the
major destination of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the increase of
multinational companies in this region; that leads to the increase in business travel
within and to Asia in recent and forthcoming years. As reported by PATA’s Issues
& Trends (2011), Asia accounts for 11% of total meetings worldwide. More Asian
destinations are seeking for MICE industry opportunities due to much higher
expenditure from MICE visitors that is between three and seven times the
expenditure of leisure visitors.

Vietnam is also one of the Asian countries gaining high FDI in last 4 years, from
US$ 2 billion in 2006 rising to US$ 8 billion in 2010 (Data World Bank). Plus, the
improvement and investment in hospitality sector, and especially the assured
security and stable politics context, partly provides high quality facilities and
conditions to speed up MICE segment in Vietnam. However, Vietnam is facing to
some challenges that are significant reasons preventing the development of this
lucrative segment, such as low infrastructure causing heavy traffic jam, shortage of
 64

art and congress centers. Broadly speaking, MICE is not only about meetings of
enterprise and politic issues, but also the large-scale and international art
performances. Currently Vietnam just invests in the hospitality sector serving for
business and politics meetings. It is recommended to direct real estate projects to
construct art performance center whose capacity is enough for international
performance and well-equipped.

8.2 Spiritual tourism

Spiritual tourism refers to many tourism categories that help tourist find
healthiness and inner balance for both body and soul. It can consist of religious
tourism, spa tourism and healthiness tourism. These new tourism segments are
adopted most strongly by China and India, which are said to be the cradle of
Buddhism religion and contemplation act. The increasing stress in business
environment and the trend of “back-to-nature” provides a great growth potential for
spiritual tourism in Asia due to the concept of natural meditation and soul
indulgence. At present Thailand is the world’s most popular spa destination with
nearly 4 million international arrivals for spa treatment in 2009. China and
Indonesia are other Asia’s key spa destination that welcomed 3.3 billion and 2.5
billion international visitors respectively in 2009. Vietnam and Cambodia are two
emerging spa industry and predicted to explosively grow, especially Vietnam
thanks to the arisen professional spa services in many hotels and resorts along
the famous beaches (Chitakasem, Jan 2011).

Religious tourism (also known as faith or pilgrimage travel) is a form of travel

combining pilgrimage, learning about a religion and contemplation act. In Asia, this
kind of tour plays a key role in the tourism industries of Myanmar, India, China,
Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal. This tour aims at travelers who would like to know much
more about a religion, express belief, do worship and experience the tranquil and
modest life at cloister in order for inner balance and stress reduction. Vietnam is a
country with high religious belief and respects the spiritual life. According to the
statistics, Buddhism makes up 80–90% of the whole Vietnam’s population and
 65

there are totally 14,775 pagodas and temples. Vietnam’s pagoda architectures are
diversely constructed and influenced through spatial and historical elements and
differentiated by aboriginal cultures. Besides, Buddhism festivals are worshiped
and organized in a solemn manner that creates a cultural characteristic specifically
in Vietnamese spiritual life. Currently the pilgrimage tour are mainly aimed at
domestic tourists or just inserted as a part of tour packages without carefully
designed for a specific niche of international tourists. Hence, there is much
development space for this potential product in near future.

Spiritual tourism in Vietnam seems to be still new to the world but is becoming
approached due to many elements of tranquility and peace. A travel agency
specializing in women’s travel named Wanderlust and Lipstick in USA has
organized “A spiritual voyage to Vietnam with Psychic Ainslie MacLeod” this
autumn. The tour is designed for participants to “experience the wonders of
Vietnam while empowered through a series of experiential workshops based on
Ainslie’s latest book: The Transformation: Discover the key to living a life of deeper
purpose and meaning” to overcome fears, blocks and limiting beliefs. About the
domestic tour operator, Haivenu is one of few companies offering the kind of
healthiness tour like “Vietnam Healing Arts”. It entails “Buddhist mediation,
Vietnamese herbal and processes, ancient village, garden houses, (…) cycling,
(…) highly regarded spa resort, Traditional Vietnamese Medicine Museum,
Mekong River cruise, ancient Khmer pagoda”. Emphatically, with the advantages
of the long-lastingly traditional therapy and herbalism, Buddhism’s prevalence and
belief, tranquility and natural beauty, and evolving spa industry, the industry can
intensify and promote the spiritual tourism market further.

8.3 Volunteer tourism

Volunteer tourism refers to any type of holiday in which the tourist participates in
voluntary works in the destination and does not receive financial compensation,
and even must provide financial contribution, in some cases. It is sometimes
known as “voluntourism”, which is defined as “The conscious, seamlessly
 66

integrated combination of voluntary service to a destination and the best,

traditional elements of travel – arts, culture, geography, history and recreation – in
that destination.” Several types of volunteer activities comprises wildlife and nature
conservation, community projects, working with children, and other special
interests in healthcare, arts, social outreach, education, science and research
(SNV Netherlands, VolunTourism.org). Most of charity institutions and volunteer
organization, that organize and offer volunteer trip arrangement volunteers, charge
volunteers a fee in order to cover their year-round coordinating and operational
costs or to raise funds to contribute materials and other resources to the overseas
project. Hence, in most cases, par of volunteer abroad means commitment to
fundraising (International Volunteer Programs Association).

Even though Vietnamese economy is growing at an optimistic rate and appraised

by the world for its fast development during two last decades, several rural regions
in Vietnam are still in poverty and backward situation. Besides, the war traumatic
victims, orphanages, the disabled, and other social issues are in need as well as in
shortage of social helps. Thus, Vietnam is always the voluntourism destination
highly recommended and helped in many volunteer projects and organizations that
are found on the Internet. Actually, this combination of volunteer and tourism has
been applied in some tour operators in Vietnam. However, in these tours, tourists
spend most of their time for city traveling. Charity and orphanage sightseeing and
fundraising are just a small part in the tour activities. Administrator of Vietnam
tourism or local tour operator can largely apply this tourism type by providing and
arranging volunteer tour for travelers and especially youth packagers, in which
travelers can participate in an actual volunteer works, spend some days at local
homestay, be encouraged to buy handicraft souvenirs. At the same time of
volunteering, travelers can still enjoy the wild beauty at rural regions and
experience local culture. Instead of the provision of normal relaxation tours, the
supplement of this kind of sustainable tourism will diversify tourist choices and
help develop community as well. It is a different way for tourist to actually
experience the local culture.
 67

8.4 Eco tourism

Eco tourism, included in nature-based tourism, accounts for 20–40% of

international tourists, thanks to many urban dwellers looking for authentic and
natural experiences (SNV Netherlands). The International Ecotourism Society
delineates the principles of eco-tourism as minimizing impact on environment,
establishing environmental and natural awareness, providing positive experience
for both visitors and hosts, providing direct financial benefits to conservation and
local people, and raising sensitivity to the political, environmental, social issues of
host countries.

The ecological and geographical features which are advantageous for eco-tourism
appear from North to South of Vietnam with extensive coastline, large amount of
forest and mountain, multitude of rare and special species of plants and animals.
Besides, the four out of 30 National Parks are recognized as ASEAN’s Heritage
and one as World’s Heritage by UNESCO, and several other recognitions for their
importance to the world’s environment. Presently eco-tours are essential segment
of Vietnam tourism thanks to the global tourism trend and natural advantages in
Vietnam. Nonetheless, there are few conservation policies for these areas. For
example, the last Javan Rhino in Vietnam was killed by poachers in the park in
2010 and a handful of elephants are killed every year. Besides, the government
has proposed building several hydroelectric dams which will further degrade the
park. Hence, Vietnam should set some priorities for nature conservation to truly
develop this segment in the future (Adam Bray, 2011).

8.5 Culinary tourism

Local cuisine experience is indispensable to traveling and a must-have activity in

every tour. The culture of eating and drinking at a place reflects local culture and
nature environment and also plays a key role in tourism development of that place.
Those developed tourism countries usually concentrate on national image building
through the brands of national business and cuisines by setting up food brands
 68

largely overseas. Culinary tourism (also known as food or gastronomy tour) is

about unique and memorable experience of local cuisine, not only at acclaimed
and high-profile restaurants but also at a roadside café, and can be divided into
urban and rural experiences (Tourism Queensland, 2003).

Philip Kotler used to suggest Vietnam should become the kitchen of the world due
to the distinctiveness and diversification in Vietnamese cuisine that is favored by
the majority of foreigners (Saigon Times Online, July 2011). Presently Vietnamese
gastronomy has been promoted at World Food Day (hosted by Vietnam last year),
Gastronomy Programs in large hotels or Food Fairs.For the most part, food tours
in Vietnam is currently organized for cooking lover and food writer with major
activities of tasting Vietnamese typical dishes, sight-seeing outdoor markets to
learn about different ingredients, attending cooking class with famous chef cooks.
It is viewed as urban or city experience, mentioned above. For the development of
food tour, it is necessary to expand travel routes to remote regions. Tourists can
taste very distinctive local dishes and ingredients of each place. Besides, several
other activities might be added e.g. farm visiting, recipe exchange with farmers
and local people, joining in vegetable planting and picking for rural experience.
Besides food aspect in culinary tourism, Vietnam also can develop this tour into
other products like coffee or tea. A tour to tea gardens in highland regions can be
a combination of learning about tea planting and producing procedures,
Vietnamese culture of tea brewery, tasting and indispensably, enjoying exotic
scenery in highlands.

This niche market of food tourism can be presented as a tool of destination

marketing, as in Mexico and Thailand cases. Mexican gastronomy tours was
launched in 2009 and strongly promoted by Mexican government by a bundle of
activities such as accrediting a chef and restaurateur to be Mexico’s official
Cuisine Ambassadress, designing “culinary routes” through each states and
introducing to the world about the revolving life around the food in Mexico (Medoza
M. 2010). Or the expansion of Thaifoods restaurant, which was totally 9,500
restaurants in 2005 and mushroomed into 20,000 in 2008 all over the world.
 69

Bringing Thailand food to overseas is not only a business act but also a bridge to
bring the nation image beyond border. For this purpose, Thailand’s government
assigned a policy in which the owners of overseas Thaifoods restaurant are
provided a low-interested loan with flexible terms, supported with cooking tools,
ingredients, and professional chef trained (Dung T. 2005)

In conclusion, tourism is not only lucrative itself but also beneficial to other
industries in an economy. Significantly, for developing countries, tourism also
contributes to community and sustainable development. The diversification of
tourism business is an effective approach to maximize opportunities and make
most of potentials. In addition to the innovation of existing tour packages for mass
market, seeking and fulfilling niche market is a useful and practical act for Vietnam
tourism development.

9 CONCLUSION

The thesis concentrated on evaluating Vietnam tourism situation after the strategic
marketing plan in the period of 2001 – 2010; learning the reasons of shortcomings
in the tourism’s development and giving the recommendations for a strategic
development in the future based on qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Tourism is an important sector of a country’s economy. Tourism speaks up the

natural beauty, cultural identity and distinctions amongst nations and ethnics.
Tourism is the combination of many elements of culture, geography and people. It
is also responsible for connecting economies, politics and external relations.
Tourism plays a significantly role since its enormous distribution to the national
economy in term of GDP, direct and indirect employment, to culture and nature
preservation and sustainable development.

The first development strategy of Vietnam tourism (2001 – 2010) did finish and
succeed, to some extent, with the results of reaching more than 5 million
 70

international visitors in 2010 and the constantly high growth rate in through the
decade. These results can be leveraged to step forwards in the future. However,
there was no in-depth research for the exact reasons of these results, apart from
many marketing efforts from Vietnam tourism board. It is said that this growth is
just the temporary success due to the saturation in the big tourism markets like
Thailand. Moreover, the repeated visits are very low compared to other countries.
From the general Vietnam tourism’s context, Vietnam needs to concern about
marketing performance and society’s awareness that require a comprehensive
and deep change in order to further both tourism and the whole country’s economy
in the future. After the study, there are four aspects in marketing of Vietnam
tourism that needs to be improved as concluded in the figure below:

Figure 9: The conclusion of the study

- Select an appropriate - Improve existing tourism products

image - Focus on niche markets: MICE,
- Build core values for the spiritual, eco-, culinary &
destination brand volunteer tourism to broaden
- Redesign logo & slogan for tourist choice & use effectively the
brand recognition tourism potentials
Branding Product development
Marketing aspects for the
long-term development of
Internet-based
Vietnam tourism
Advertising communication

- Set objectives before - Use the official website as the

each advertising communication channel by user-
campaign generated contents
- Focus on building creative - Use social pages & integrated
advertisements for two application to approach
goals: prospects widely
o Convey the core values of - Build information & feedback
the destination brand system to support tourists &
o Provoke emotion at the research market
prospects
-
 71

- Branding works as the core concept of marketing. Anything without its

own brand is considered to be a commodity, which has no difference from others.
To date since the increasing competitiveness and higher realization of marketing’s
importance, the world’s countries have noticed on building a brand for their
country. A country brand and a tourist destination brand have a close and mutual
supporting relationship. Hence, Vietnam should promote positive images, values
and competitive advantage in all aspects to enhance the national image in
international public. At the same time, Vietnam should build a visual designs
associated with its brand whose functions is as brand recall and recognition.
These image and visual types accompanied with advertising campaigns will
communicate the core values of Vietnam tourism to the prospective travelers.

- Advertising works as a mean of communication to convey the Vietnam

tourism’s image and core values to people around the world. Amongst the
marketing tools, advertising are used largely, despite fragmented and clutter
advertising environment. And if executed creatively with a key message,
advertising might bring the results beyond expectations due to its high ability to
provoke emotion and create awareness.

- Internet works as the most effective communication channel to date

thanks to the features of interaction, connection, integration, easy accessibility and
less expensiveness. Marketing based on Internet can carry many tasks at the
same time such as: communicate the brand, providing information, market
research (feedback system and online survey), and expanding partnership
network.

- Product development and niche focus are two important tasks in order
to develop tourism in long term. Expanding tourist products on both mass and
niche markets will help Vietnam approach various segments, and get more tourist
expenditure. Tourism, similar to other businesses, needs to design and innovate
products and services to meet the prospect’s increasing and changing demands.
 72

Alongside the improvement on marketing issues, Vietnam tourism needs to raise

the society’s awareness on the importance of national tourism development.
Marketing can promote Vietnam tourism and attract more international visitors to
Vietnam; however, for a long term and stable development, Vietnam tourism also
pays attention to quality. Tourism quality is also expressed through customer
service quality, trading quality and security assurance for tourists.

With all the comprehensive marketing efforts, society’s awareness, innovative

operation, cultural and natural preservation, Vietnam with its enormous tourism
resources will have opportunity to become an ideal, exotic and favorite destination
for tourists all over the world.
 73

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APPENDIX
The interview questions with Mr. Adam Bray:

1. What do you think about Vietnam tourism industry?

Vietnam has a good start on its tourism industry. Vietnam is a country rich in
natural resources with a vast diversity of culture and natural landscape. Though at
times slow, the transportation network is nonetheless convenient, and Vietnam
has the most advanced telecommunications network in the region. Vietnam has
been a popular destination over the past decade, but it has had difficulty grabbing
repeat visitors due to their frustrations with scams and a sense that they've seen
enough of the highlights on their first visit. Vietnam has unmatched potential for
future tourism development, but this is slowed down by an inefficient and often
corrupt tourism administration.

2. Do you think Vietnam has enough conditions to develop the tourism further and
has the competitive ability to other advanced tourist destinations in Asian region
such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, etc.?

Of all the destinations in Southeast Asia, I think Vietnam has the greatest potential
for further development of its tourism industry. This stems from the amazing
diversity of culture, landscape and a richness of national history. I think that the
government is doing more to slow things down that facilitate development,
however.

3. What is your opinion about Vietnam tourism marketing campaigns recently (e.g.
Year of National Tourism, Sea Festivals in Nha Trang)? Do you think they are
communicated well and strongly enough to attract tourists?

Unfortunately, these campaigns have been a complete failure. Vietnam's focus,

while asserting that it wants to attract foreigner tourists, has actually been directed
internally, almost entirely. The government has made no attempt to reach out to
foreign tourists with these festivals, other than print a few stories in government
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newspapers. There are no printed brochures, no schedules of events, no memos

distributed to hotels or tour companies, no signs in English advertising the festivals
at these destinations, no websites for the events, and no social media campaigns
related to them.

The festivals and 'marketing campaigns' themselves are very poorly executed. The
individual events are never organized until the the last minute. Most of them never
even happen. Often local residents are barred from attending. Many of the events
are held exclusively for the pleasure of government officials and sponsors. Foreign
media are rarely if ever invited, and at times even they are barred from attending
when they do try to go on their own.

4. Which aspects do you think Vietnam should improve to draw more tourists,
expand tourism markets and especially, to have repeated visits?

Repeat visits occur when tourists enjoy their first visit and either leave with a
sense that there is a lot left to see, or that they can re-create all the fun and
relaxation that they had (hopefully) on their last visit. To make this happen, the
tourism industry needs to pay attention to the needs of the tourists. They need to
actually ask what tourists like and don't like about their trips. So far this doesn't
happen. The Tourism Administration treats tourists like a mysterious black box that
can't be understood. They need to be taking opinion surveys to begin with.

Also, the Administration of Tourism needs to be taking a two-sided approach. On

the one hand they need to emphasize the uniqueness of each city and destination
within Vietnam. Vietnam has done this with the big things like Ha Long Bay and
Hoi An. However, other cities--Saigon being a glaring example--have failed to
market anything unique that they can offer for tourists. The other thing the Tourism
Administration needs to market is fun and leisure activities. They've done this to
some extent with the recent push for 5-star resorts and golf courses. While this
does attract a limited number of big spenders, they have entirely ignored a
diversity of other more affordable activities such as adventure sports, walking tours
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and theme parks.

5. As the creator of muinebeach.net blog with full of useful guide and necessary
information, what is your evaluation on the tourism information system of Vietnam?
Which communication channels Vietnam should aim in order to provide tourist
information as well as to promote Vietnam tourism?

Vietnam's 'official' tourism information system is almost nonexistent. The National

Administration of Tourism has a website but it is difficult to find, outdated, and its
not user-friendly. The government does not utilize any form of social media
(Facebook, twitter, etc) and in fact Facebook is blocked by the government. As
mentioned, there aren't even any signs in English that are ever posted at tourism
destinations to alert tourists to special events.

The National Administration of Tourism has printed a guidebook to Vietnam, which

itself is decent, but its nonetheless not objective since businesses pay to be listed.
The sale of foreign-published guidebooks is banned in Vietnam (because the
sections on history, politics and geography are uncensored), so there aren't any
alternate sources of information available.

All of these things need to change if Vietnam wants to get serious about
disseminating information about the tourism industry.

6. As a travel journalist and writer specializing in Vietnamese culture, which

image/symbol/cultural characteristics Vietnam should use to promote the tourism
brand and to make it differentiated from other competitors in Asia?

Vietnam has a wealth of cultural symbols and institutions to draw from and most
have been neglected. This includes the country's vast selection of cuisine, the
French colonial architecture legacy, pristine beaches and amazing geological
features, the Cham/Champa culture, unique wildlife, and hill tribe cultures. Any
and all of these should be expanded upon.
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7. Currently Vietnam's tour packages are mainly about heritage and sea tourism.
What do you think about Vietnam should place more effort in other tourism
products to diversify the tour package choices e.g. Vietnam's minority cultures,
food and wine tourism or eco-tourism?

Minority cultures, local cuisines and eco-tourism are indeed the three main areas
in which tourism should be expanded. These are also key areas where local
residents should be involved and can benefit. Further, the ability for local
communities to generate an income in these areas will also stimulate a desire to
preserve these precious resources. So far many of the government's tourism
programs do little to benefit local communities. Guides in minority areas are
generally Vietnam, rather than locals, who come from Saigon or Hanoi. Likewise,
many of the hotels restaurants and other venues in these areas are government-
owned or owned by people from outside the area that are government-affiliated.
Entrance fees to parks, temples and heritage sites almost never go to the local
community or even to develop and protect the sites themselves. These funds need
to be redirected to more productive areas.

8. Beside the natural condition and diversified wild life in remote regions of
Vietnam, what does Vietnam should focus on to develop the eco-tourism that is
the tourism trend nowadays due to climate change?

Despite a lot of the hype about future consequences of climate change for
Vietnam, I don't believe Vietnam has seen many effects yet. Vietnam has some
great national parks but not much is being done to protect them. Cat Tien for
example, which the government has been pushing for UNESCO
recognition, is a real mess. The last Javan Rhino in Vietnam was killed by
poachers in the park in 2010. A handful of elephants in and around the park are
killed every year and are nearly gone now. This year the government has
proposed building several hydroelectric dams which will further degrade the park.
Vietnam can't develop ecotourism and meanwhile destroy the same sites it wants
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to promote. Vietnam has to set some priorities.

Beyond that there are so many places that could be utilized for tourism around the
country, which have been ignored. There are numerous cave systems, mountain
ranges, hot springs, waterfalls and pristine beaches. Vietnam has yet to develop
independent hiking and trekking--largely due to
the communist fear of having foreigner wander too far in the countryside on their
own as well as the requirement for everyone to register with the police each night.
Vietnam should look to countries like New Zealand or even its communist
neighbor, China, for ways to develop independent wilderness trekking/tramping
activities. A perfect place to start is the area around the newly-discovered Long
Wall of Quang Ngai in central Vietnam.