Tourism Businesses Need Close Cooperation to Exploit Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia Market

 

It can be clearly seen that three countries all have big potential in tourism, which are characterized by the typical features of the South East Asian area-heaven-sent natural wonders, antique architectural buildings and the unique cultural features of each country.

 

With nearly ten places recognized by UNESCO as the World Heritage Sites, three countries Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are currently sharing the most attractive tourism market in the region with heaven –sent natural wonders and typical cultural features of each country. Vietnam owns the big potential of marine tourism with long beaches, white sand being famous all over the world, heritages recognized by UNESCO as the world heritages such as Ha Long Bay, My Son Sanctuary, Hoi An Ancient Town, Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park, Hue royal court music, Gong culture of Central highlands; Cambodia is the land of ancient temple of Angkor as well as the tourist attraction of Phnom Penh capital and beaches of Sihanoukvile province with full of perfect services; Laos is considered the land of tower temples with 1,400 pagodas with a group of hundreds of Buddhist statues.

 

The project “Vietnam- Laos- Cambodia: three countries-one destination” once linked in a close way could be an ideal journey for visitors. According Mr Vu Hoang An, Director of Rainbow Travel Company, visitors now tend to take tours through two or three countries. Hence, if the tourism product “three countries- one destination” is built in a professional and unique way that brings about more and more benefits for the clients, a large number of visitors will be attracted. For example, Vietnamese marine tourism and Cambodian cultural tourism and Laos ecological tourism can be combined, which is in favor of many international visitors.

 

In recent years, the policies issued by the state have been opener and also encouraged the cooperation and development. These laws consider tourism as a key industry which has big effect on others. These days, certain tourism projects in Mekong region are developed such as Mekong Discovery, Mekong Tourism Year 2009-2010, Mekong Tourism Forum held in Cambodia in 2010 and some other tourism promoting projects are also underway, etc. This should be the chance to attract international visitors to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The work of tourism promotion is getting more attention and more professional investment than ever before. According to many travel agents, the prospect for cooperation among three countries is very huge.

 

However, there are certain shortcomings that leave negative effect on the number of visitors taking tour to these countries such as the poor tourism services. The cost is still high and there is no proper support from the national administrators to the work of educating and promoting tourism. Besides that, the infrastructure is poor leading to the inconvenience in traffic and difficulties in getting around. In my opinion, national departments should have both short and long term to push the task of labor education and financial support. The state should make some bigger investment in the activities of tourism promotion and have more favorable financial policies for the businesses of tourism, hotel, transportation and infrastructure development. On the other hand, tourism businesses should make serious investment in their own activities, comply with the regulations and work closely with management agencies to ensure the quality of services and a healthy and equal competition among guys in the industry.

 

With the determination of the managers, the companion of travel agencies as well as the big potential for tourism, according to Mr Pham Tien Dung, Secretary General of Hanoi Travel Club and Director of Golden Tour Company, the cooperation in tourism in the next days will find a bright future; especially the Asian transcontinental is in use. Businesses need to quickly get information, implement the policies and enjoy the support of the state in a proper and creative way to make the process bring about the best outcome.

Vietnam Business Forum would like to introduce ideas of experts about this issue:

In recent years, because of the increasing income among Vietnamese people, the demand for taking tours in foreign countries is in the trend of increasing. Especially, thank to the fact that there is the similarity among the culture and competitive price; the number of visitors to these countries finds the way to take off every year.

 

The demand and purposes are more diverse and plentiful, from the pure sightseeing tours to learn and exchange culture, and furthermore to learn about the market and study management models, etc. For this reason, the number of visitors to these countries resisted at the company is highly increasing. 

 

Cambodia and Laos are a familiar destination for Vietnamese visitors for the short time of travel, suitable places of sightseeing and shopping for Vietnamese, the low cost of tours, convenient entrance and exit procedures, the ability to provide available services. These are the first choices of visitors when they have chance to travel abroad. Thus, the number of tourists in this segment continues to increase in recent years.

 

The number of tourists to these countries takes a large number of outbound tourists. To attract visitors to this market, in my opinion, there is a need to push up the task of promotion, introducing the destinations, boosting the expansion of airline, increase the frequency in the region, promotion for new products. In addition, the road way traffic among countries is not convenient enough to develop tourism among three countries and especially Caravans.

 

Today, the service quality of tourism in these countries is not so good. Some flights to the tourism destinations in these countries are not convenient, causing the high cost of flight tickets. In my opinion, it is necessary to increase the demand of tourism among three countries in a system of complete price cooperation, aiming at the goal of developing tourism industry in Indochinese countries to be a stable, competitive and attractive market in the world.