Boosting Tourism Cooperation between Vietnam and India

It is considered the first favourable step to prepare for 2017 by one of the tour operators to realize orientation contributing to promoting Vietnam's tourism image, attracting visitors from the Indian market, whose population ranks No.2 in the world, with about 1.3 billion people.

 

Vietnam and India signed an agreement on tourism cooperation at governmental level on January 8^th, 2001. During the visit to Vietnam by Indian President in September 2014 and the visit to India by Prime Minister of Vietnam in October 2014, tourism cooperation was discussed. Development strategy of Vietnam Tourism 2020 Vision 2030 also specifies that the task to develop tourist market, prioritize expansion to attract tourists from new markets, including India. However, the implementation of the new Agreement has been done for the last 3 years, from 2013 to 2015 with the attention and close cooperation of the Vietnamese Embassy in India and the Indian Embassy in Vietnam.

 

Recently, exchange of visitors between the two countries was modest but the strong growth was achieved. In the past 5 years, the number of Indian visitors to Vietnam has increased nearly 3.5 times (344 percent), from over 16,000 in 2010 to more than 60,000 arrivals in 2015. In total more than 7.94 million foreign visitors to Vietnam in 2015, Indian tourists accounted for 0.9 percent. In recent years the number of Vietnamese tourists to India has grown rapidly, especially with tourists in pilgrimage.

 

It is forecast that by 2018, the number of Indian tourists travelling abroad may reach nearly 30 million. Indian tourists in Vietnam stay an average of 8 days, spending about US$914 / trip, much higher than other Asian source markets.

 

Indian tourists love Vietnam because they have been living and doing business here. They want to learn the culture, life experience and explore the attractive destinations in Vietnam. Besides, Vietnam's tourism has the advantage of diverse natural destinations, sea - island, adventure tourism, religious tourism and spiritual works, and famous for history, culture and nature in Vietnam.

 

Surveys and researches by TST Tourist noticed that almost 70 percent of Indian visitors join tours with fixed itinerary at the travel agency, only about 30 percent join costumed tours. Indian tourists come from big cities with international routes such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

 

Through contacts at the tourism fairs and marketing programmes, it can be seen that besides potential and development trends of the Indian market, attracting Indian tourists to Vietnam faces some difficulties, especially on the issue of aviation and visa. Currently Indian tourists to Vietnam often transit through Bangkok, Singapore or Kula Lumpur with higher ticket prices than a package tour to other countries, so Vietnam tourism businesses can not compete with them. Meanwhile, the visa procedures for entry into other countries have lower fees.

 

Besides, the tourism industries of the two countries lack information about each other and especially potential customers. The content of cooperation in promoting the tourism industry of each country also remains limited.

 

To improve this situation, in the opinion of many experts, there are some problems to be solved soon: open direct routes from urban centres of Vietnam to Indian cities and opposite; strengthen cooperation in various fields of tourism at state- level, local level and business level to promote market research, with specific products and suitable for tourists, paying attention to destination (especially the need to find destinations associated with cultural, spiritual); promote food services; simpler visa procedures; promote cooperation in bilateral tourism potential.

 

On the other hand, there are only a few hotels serving Indian food while Indian visitors wish to have at least 2 Indian dishes for breakfast. The number of Indian restaurants in Vietnam is small. According to the travel information-sharing website TripAdvisor, there are 13 restaurants in Hanoi and 20 restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City serving traditional cuisine of India. In other cities the number of Indian restaurants is very limited (3 in Da Nang, 6 in Hoi An and 6 in Nha Trang). The scale of the restaurants is mostly small, only 1-2 restaurants with capacity of 150 seats, few companies attract tourists from the Indian market.

 

Therefore, according to TST Tourist, Vietnam needs to focus on building the service system, including restaurants serving Indian cuisine, standard hotel system from 4-5 stars ready to meet the requirements of travellers.