Professionalizing the wedding tourism industry

According to the Destination Wedding Global Market Report 2023, the global wedding market is growing at an impressive rate of about 32.8% per year. Although it is a relatively new niche market, it is easy to see that wedding tourism has the potential to bring significant benefits to Vietnam's green economy; because the people who choose this form are often rich people with good economic conditions. They bring a large number of guests to use accommodation, dining, and shopping services at the chosen wedding destination for many days. And many of them are willing to extend their schedule to have a more complete travel experience.

Not only initially attracting high-class couples from all over the world to hold their weddings, many locations with advantages in landscape, climate, infrastructure, and services in our country such as Phu Quoc, Quang Ninh, Da Nang, Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, etc. have also become places for the rich and famous in the country to "choose a face to entrust their gold" with hundreds of guests. This shows that Vietnam has full potential to hold dream weddings for brides and grooms, on the beach, on the top of the mountain, in the middle of the pine forest, next to terraced fields, on a yacht, or in a cave, etc.

However, according to experts, for wedding tourism to truly become a “golden goose”, Vietnam needs more preparation and creativity. Speaking at the workshop “Development trends of wedding tourism in Vietnam” recently organized by the Institute for Tourism Development Research (ITDR), Mr. Nguyen Quang Vinh, Head of the research project of ITDR, commented: Wedding tourism can be a decisive factor in helping Vietnam emerge as an international destination, but for many years, this type of tourism has not been focused on development.

To compete with Phuket (Thailand), Bali (Indonesia) or other famous wedding destinations in the world, Vietnamese tourism needs to conduct thorough research, evaluate the current situation and development trends of wedding tourism to have appropriate promotion solutions. According to Mr. Vinh, wedding tourism customers are those who are willing to spend a lot of money on the important event of their life, but they are also very picky, demanding high quality and creativity of the products provided.

The service must be perfect, the space must be impressive, the ideas must be unique, the design must be eye-catching but still must follow the aesthetic taste of the wedding owner, so to meet, it requires a thorough and professional understanding of the needs, characteristics, and preferences of the guests.

It is worth mentioning that in our country, there is still a lack of professional wedding organizers who are capable of consulting and planning implementation, as well as a lack of a synchronous ecosystem for wedding tourism. In fact, in recent times, some international brides and grooms have only chosen Vietnam as their wedding location, while the organization, provision of services, food, costumes, and related service personnel are still from foreign suppliers.

According to Dr. Dinh Duc Quang, APEC Mandala Wyndham Mui Ne Company (Binh Thuan): Our country's wedding tourism market is still dependent on a number of source markets such as India and the Middle East; the market segment of customers with high spending capacity and long-term stays still accounts for a low proportion; the domestic wedding tourism market has not been actively activated.

Not to mention, wedding tourism products are still quite monotonous, mainly based on ideas and orders from tourists; local products are duplicated and have low added value, and service quality is uneven. Service human resources are still lacking in quantity and weak in quality, especially, technical facilities are a major obstacle, and a system of wedding tourism areas with outstanding scale and brands has not been formed...

To overcome these “bottlenecks”, Associate Professor, Dr. Pham Hong Long, Head of the Department of Tourism, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) said: First, it is necessary to have specific studies on potential wedding tourism markets such as India, China, Korea, etc. to build tourism products associated with appropriate wedding organization, taking into account the cultural and culinary characteristics of the wedding ceremony in each country.

In addition, it is necessary to promote wedding tourism destinations through many channels, especially social media through the weddings of international couples held in Vietnam; to build reasonable and competitive wedding organization service prices. In particular, it is necessary to strengthen the connection between tourist destinations associated with domestic and foreign wedding organizations, and improve the quality of wedding organization products and services.

Tourist destinations and service providers also need to diversify wedding products and services, promote training, and equip staff with in-depth knowledge of wedding event organization such as design, decoration, photography, filming, costumes, etc.

In order to professionalize and enhance the competitiveness of wedding tourism products in Vietnam, the organization of wedding tourism needs to ensure additional requirements for monitoring the medical health of guests; have policies to protect the rights and personal data of tourists, contributing to bringing peace of mind and satisfaction to couples and guests choosing wedding tourism in Vietnam.