Vietnam Business Forum’s reporter Lan Anh interviewed Luu Duc Ke, director of the Hanoi branch of the Ben Thanh Tourist Corporation on the occasion of the ‘Vietnamese Days in Germany’ and Vietnam’s reception of the three millionth foreign visitor on November 11, 2005.
Can you give a brief introduction about the Hanoi branch of Ben Thanh Tourist?
The Ben Thanh Tourist Corporation is one of the leading tourism enterprises in Vietnam. So far, we have established branches in Japan and France. In the coming time, we will open branches in Germany to get access to European tourists in Germany, which is considered as the heart of Europe and home to famous fairs and exhibitions attracting millions of foreign visitors each year.
The Hanoi branch of the Ben Thanh Tourist Company was set up around 11 years ago. Different from our Ho Chi Minh City-based corporation, which specialises in hotel, trade and travel services, the Hanoi branch concentrates on travel services only. So far, we have completed our target of receiving 10,000 visitors. The number of visitors served by the branch may reach 13,000 or more in the final months of this year. This year’s revenues are estimated at over VND 30 billion. We are now concentrating on serving tourists who have hard-to-please requirements and developing tours to Japan and Australia for Vietnamese customers.
Is this a good sign for your good business activities?
Despite winning contracts to receive foreign tourists to Vietnam, we have many of the same worries as other tourist companies. We worry about hotel rooms for our tourists. In the past, hotels reserved 30 per cent of their rooms for tourists. Now, with an increase in the number of business guests to Vietnam, the number of rooms for tourists in hotels has been cut to ten per cent. The actual figure may be lower than 10 per cent. Therefore, we face many difficulties in finding rooms for our guests during peak time of the tourist season. Even we have reserved rooms for our foreign guest for half a year, we cannot be sure whether we will have rooms for our tourists or not. This is a difficulty of travel companies. With the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and bird flu, travel agencies have haad to increase their expenditure on marketing and promotion activities to attract tourists but they do not receive adequate co-operation from hotels and service providing establishments. When we can attract tourists to Vietnam, we find it difficult to find rooms for them. Travel agencies act as a bridge linking tourism and hotel services into a system, so we hope to receive full co-operation from providers of these services.
Vietnam has completed its yearly target of receiving three million foreign visitors as the three millionth guest arrived on November 11. What do you think about this event?
As planned, Vietnam would receive three million foreign visitors in 2005 and six million in 2010. This is a huge figure, depicting the rapid development of Vietnamese tourism. It would be better if apart from efforts to increase the number of foreign visitors to Vietnam, we could improve the quality of our services and infrastructure facilities, in particular human resources. We have received many visitors. But it will be more difficult to keep them stay for a longer time and make a good impression that so they would return. There are two difficulties travel companies cannot overcome. The first difficulty is to find rooms for visitors as I have mentioned above and the second is to improve the quality of services and tour guides. This year, as Vietnam has received more tourists, the tourism service lacks qualified tour guides who can speak Japanese and Spanish. Also, guides focus on shopping tours to earn commission. As the development of service quality and human resources cannot follow the increase in the number of foreign visitors, the figure of three million foreign guests has a quantitative meaning.
What solutions should Vietnam provide to address the issue?
I think that instead of increasing the number of foreign visitors to Vietnam, we should concentrate on improving our service quality. Vietnam has landscapes and natural conditions as wonderful as other countries, but our infrastructure facilities remain poor. One of the solutions is to promote co-operation with famous tourist corporations, such as Tur of Germany and the Mediterranean Club of France. These are famous corporations with great experience in tourism business and training. Also, they have financial strength to invest in infrastructure development in Vietnam. The State should issue policies to call for corporations like them to invest in Vietnam. Fiercer competition is unavoidable but it would help local travel companies develop more strongly. For us, we have considered and accepted further learning from opponents during international integration.
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