More tourist destinations set to welcome back foreign travelers

Along with the launch of a pilot plan aimed at welcoming international tourists to Phu Quoc island, the Vietnamese tourism industry is preparing to gradually expand to other destinations across the country, including Ha Long, Hoi An, Nha Trang, and Da Lat.

Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO-recognised world heritage site in northern Vietnam.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recently issued a plan aimed at implementing measures to stimulate tourism demand and revive the local tourism industry by the end of the year or by the start of next year.

In line with this plan, priority will be given to speeding up the COVID-19 vaccination drive for residents and workers at tourist centres in order to ensure safety for tourists.  

Most notably, tourism service establishments and tourist destinations will be required to improve their pandemic prevention capacity and abide by COVID-19 guidelines set out by the Health Ministry, along with facilitating the travel of vaccinated domestic and international visitors.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will strive to ramp up tourism promotion in a bid to stimulate tourism demand. It will also boost communication campaigns to popularize its twin messages of ‘Vietnamese People Travel in Vietnam’ and ‘Vietnam – A Safe and Attractive Destination’.

The ministry will introduce safe travel procedures and fresh immigration policies, and renew promotional tourism schemes, while simultaneously diversifying communication channels via social media, online travel events, and other major international media channels.

This will see the Ministry effectively co-ordinate efforts with Vietnamese representative agencies located abroad to deploy promotional tourism activities, encourage tourism firms to develop incentive tour packages, and assist them in resuming and expanding markets and selling tourism products.

A primary focus will be on  diversifying tourism products in a bid to meet fresh market trends, including culinary tourism, agricultural tourism, eco-tourism, golf tourism golf, and health care travel.

The ministry says the tourism industry will accelerate digital transformation by digitizing a network of tourist attractions, while upgrading tourism applications and building a digital vaccination certification system at www.travelpass.tourism.vn.

Vietnam has closed its borders since last April 2020 to combat COVID-19, and it has therefore received almost no foreign tourists. Initial success in the COVID-19 fight in late 2020 gave the local tourism industry the chance to gradually recover from the pandemic, but the resurgence of the virus early this year jeopardized its hope.   

Several regional countries like Thailand and Singapore have begun to welcome back foreign travelers on the condition that the travelers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and they test negative before their entry.

Economic experts and tour operators requested the Vietnamese Government to follow the model if they do not want the local tourism industry to lose out to regional rivals.  

Most recently, Phu Quoc island in the southern province of Kien Giang has been green-lighted to carry out a pilot scheme of receiving back vaccinated travelers. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism hopes the model will be replicated if the pilot scheme proves successful.   

VOV