There Is More Room for Business Travel Development in Vietnam

 

Vietnam is endowed with enormous advantages unseen in other countries like ​​natural landscapes, beaches and culture diversity for tourism development. However, business travel seems to be a weakness in the country although it is talked a lot.

 

In Vietnam, business travel services are usually limited to meetings, incentives, conferences, exhibitions (MICE); thus, this form of tourism is not attractive to MICE tourists.

Currently, Vietnam hardly has any large-scale professional international fairs. Event organisers in Vietnam do not pay attention to organising sellers-meet-buyers or business matchmaking events; thus, they cannot attract business travellers.

Vietnam does not have infrastructure for the organisation of big business travel events as in other countries given its overall development and the early formation of this tourism service. Singapore Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre has a floor area of over 100,000 sq. metres and the largest no-column multifunctional conference room in Southeast Asia, with over 12,000 sq. metres. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, even in big cities like Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang City do not have big, professional conference rooms. Biggest conference centres like the National Convention Centre (total floor area of 60,000 sq. metres, the largest room capable of holding 3,500 - 4,000 people) or Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre - SECC (total floor area of 40,000 sq. metres) lack conditions to host mega events. These facilities host about 25 per cent of major events.

 

Business travel expense is mainly paid by employers. Most of business travellers spend 3-4 times as much as regular tourists. They go to survey investment and business opportunities, attend prestigious trade fairs, promote investment, meet government agencies, industrial and export processing zone management boards to learn about policies, or attend events with hundreds of attendants from giant companies. Therefore, this is a good chance for developing business travel.

At the Asia-Pacific Incentives and Meetings Expo, I met many tourism promotion agencies, especially MICE tourism promotion units, including SECB (Singapore Exhibition & Convention Bureau), TICEB (Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau), and myCeB (Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau). They are ready and willing to give a helping hand with special, clear policies for travel agencies to bring tourists events in their nations.

To develop business travel in tantamount with potentials, apart from economic development, synchronous infrastructure, and service diversification, human factor is very important in tourism services, especially business travel.

 

Business travel operators must have broad knowledge in many socioeconomic and management sectors. For example, to organise a study tour and technical visit to study public administration and State management reform, apart from services such as accommodation and transport, the operators must understand and advise clients about countries with good public administrations and with cultural similarities with Vietnam. They must work with clients to learn about agendas, contents they can help with, and share experience if possible. In a trade - investment promotion event, the operators need to understand both sides, support clients to find out best partners in the shortest time, advise clients to prepare necessary documents like the memorandum of understanding (MOU), lecturers, and follow-up events. Especially, at big events, participants have high expenditure and they require destination management companies (DMC) to provide perfect services to every detail.

 

GoldenTour & Convention Centre (GoldenTour) is a leading business travel operator for the past 12 years since its inception.

 

Thanks to its premium quality, the company is the top choice for business travel delegations of many large agencies and companies, including the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Trade Union of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam Cooperative Alliance, Hanoi Beer-Alcohol-Beverages Corp. (Habeco), Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex), Lilama Corp, Vietnam Paper Corporation, Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Joint Stock Corporation (Vinaconex), French Pharmacy Group, Viet Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank), Vietnam Bank of Agricultural and Rural Development (Agribank), Petrolimex Group Commercial Joint Stock Bank, Vietnam Prosperity Bank (VP Bank), Vietnam Export Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Eximbank), Hong Leong Bank; business associations like footwear, electronics, computer science, environment, agriculture, pharmaceutical, engineering associations; and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like ActionAid, World Vision and Plan International.

Anticipating the economy will continue to face difficulties in 2013 and many organisations will tighten their spending, GoldenTour & Convention boldly invests in new cost-effective MICE travel programmes. Customers will be offered a lot of incentives from the company’s partners like airlines, trade promotion agencies and event organisers. By the end of the first quarter, GoldenTour organised 25 MICE delegations (each group has 25 - 100 members), including five foreign delegations visiting Vietnam to attend trade fairs and explore business opportunities. Specially, in March 2013, with the support of Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, GoldenTour organised a delegation consisting of more than 300 members to watch Formula 1 Championship in Malaysia, of whom more than 200 members were on travel incentive.

The company expects a 40 percent growth in business travel services in 2013.