Tourism businesses are determined to attract and serve over 20 million international visitors to Vietnam in 2024, making Vietnam a highly developed tourism country in the region.
Tourism businesses expect to accelerate and bring tourism back to its "golden age" of 2019 in 2024.
NHAT THINH
Positive signs for a breakthrough in 2024
The Vietnam Tourism Association (VITA)'s 2023 performance summary report and 2024 work plan implementation report said that last year, Vietnam's tourism has shown positive signs of recovery, continuing to recover from 2022. By the end of November, Vietnam had welcomed 11.2 million international visitors (estimated at 69% compared to 2019), serving 103.2 million domestic visitors. Total revenue from tourists is estimated at VND 628,300 billion. Of which, South Korea, China, Taiwan, the US, and Japan are the largest markets sending visitors to Vietnam. With positive premises from 2023, VITA Chairman Vu The Binh expects 2024 to be a breakthrough year for Vietnam's tourism. "HHDLVN continues to call on the tourism business community to make efforts and strive towards the goal of fully recovering tourism activities on all criteria achieved in 2019. Tourism businesses are determined to attract and serve over 20 million international visitors to Vietnam, making Vietnam a country with highly developed tourism in the region" - Mr. Vu The Binh informed. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnamese tourism had a brilliant 2019 when it reached the milestone of welcoming 18 million international visitors, surpassing Indonesia (about 16 million) to rise to 4th place in Southeast Asia, after Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Tourism revenue reached 726,000 billion VND, directly contributing 9.2% of GDP. However, after recovering from Covid, Vietnamese tourism fell into a situation of "going first and falling behind" when epidemic control was better but the speed of tourism recovery was slower. Recently, Malaysia's tourism has quickly recovered compared to before the pandemic when it reached 26 million international visitors in 2023, while Thailand surpassed its target of 25 million in early December and set an ambitious target for 2024 with 35 million international visitors. Meanwhile, Vietnam only "timidly" set a target of welcoming 8 million international visitors, lower than Indonesia's target of 8.5 million visitors, and then in the last quarter of the year dared to boldly push the target up to 12 - 13 million visitors. Experts and tourism businesses all believe that bringing tourism back to the level of 2018 in 2024 is a mandatory condition for Vietnam to be competitive internationally in the next phase, while avoiding wasting existing tourism infrastructure resources. Therefore, the target of welcoming 18 - 20 million visitors must be achieved as soon as possible.
International visitors to Ho Chi Minh City
NHAT THINH
Lack of international visitors, tourism ecosystem is still very difficult
Although the number of visitors exceeded the target, the operations of most accommodation establishments, entertainment venues, shopping malls, and tourism services across the country are still struggling to bear losses. In fact, due to many objective factors, the level of impact and difficulty is even greater than the 3 years after Covid-19 (2020, 2021, and 2022), when financial resources are increasingly depleted, the number of international and domestic visitors is not as expected. Mr. Nguyen Chau A, General Director of Oxalis Group, said that up to now, the inbound market (international visitors to Vietnam) in Europe and the US has almost completely recovered. However, the rate of self-traveling tourists is high without booking tours through intermediaries, so inbound B2B businesses are still facing many difficulties. Traditional large markets such as China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have not yet recovered, along with the decline in domestic visitors, making hotel operations difficult. "The revenue in November and December of hotels in the Oxalis system was only 30-40% of last year. International visitors are like a drop in the bucket, the tourism ecosystem is still very difficult" - Mr. Nguyen Chau A said. Similarly, according to Mr. Dang Minh Truong - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sun Group, in the past year, most of Sun World entertainment and recreation destinations nationwide of Sun Group have not met the set targets for the number of visitors and revenue, only Sun World Fansipan Legend (Sa Pa) and Sun World Ba Den Mountain (Tay Ninh) achieved positive growth. Of which, the number of visitors to Sun World Ba Den Mountain grew most impressively with an increase of nearly 50% compared to 2022, while Sun World Fansipan Legend recorded the same growth as in 2019, which is also a success compared to other destinations. In the resort sector, apart from some bright spots in Sa Pa and Da Nang, in general, Sun Group's hotel and resort facilities have only maintained average capacity compared to pre-Covid years. The main reason is that the number of international visitors has not recovered as expected. However, Sun Group's leaders believe that the international tourism market in 2024 will have more optimistic and brighter signals than in 2023. In particular, Resolution 82 of the Government on the main tasks and solutions to accelerate recovery and accelerate effective and sustainable tourism development will continue to be a boost for Vietnamese tourism to attract more international visitors. At the same time, the image of Vietnamese tourism continues to be highly appreciated internationally. In recent times, Vietnam has continuously won prestigious and prestigious tourism awards, typically the World Travel Awards. Many new destinations and creative experience products of Vietnam are increasingly building their brands in the international media. To truly make a breakthrough next year, Mr. Dang Minh Truong said that Vietnam needs to continue to relax visa policies to create a competitive advantage on par with countries in the region. Recently, visa policies have made significant progress, however, to have more breakthroughs and be more competitive, we must have stronger reforms. "We would like to propose expanding unilateral visa exemptions for citizens of countries with higher levels of development than Vietnam, large tourism spending and long-term stays such as: Australia, Canada, the US. The remaining countries of the European Union (Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium ...), and some countries in the Middle East such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait ... At the same time, pilot short-term visa exemptions (from 6 months to 1 year) for tourists from some potential, large-scale markets such as China, India, Taiwan ... to stimulate tourism demand, create momentum for recovery, growth, and strong development for these large markets. In addition, it is necessary to continue to strengthen cooperation with leading countries and international airlines to promote the opening of new routes and increase the frequency of existing direct flights between key tourist areas of Vietnam and tier 1 and tier 2 cities of target tourist markets, especially the Korean market. "In particular, promote bilateral relations and reopen flights to welcome tourists from Russia and Eastern European countries" - Sun Group leaders suggested.
Thanhnien.vn
Source link
Comment (0)