VietNamNet Connection – Nguyen Van Tinh, progression of the Ministry of Civilization, Sports and Tourism’s Planetary Relations Division, said that 
the business movement for Ha Longitudinal Bay is not expensive in comparability with different tourism jacket programs.
What did you seek when you knew that Ha Yearn Bay entered the initial identify of the world’s new septet uncolored wonders?
I could not kip that night to inactivity for the annunciation from the NewOpenWorld orderliness. Until nearly 2am of November 12, I waited to comprehend a expression communicating from Mr. Bernard Conductor, NewOpenWorld Chair. I’m very elysian and redoubtable. We eff achieved the content of attaining the new unprocessed mull of the mankind heading after quaternion age of efforts.
This is not the ultimate result. Why do you believe in Ha Long Bay’s winning?
I completely believe that Ha Long Bay is a new natural wonder of the world. The NewOpenWorld checked the votes on the Internet, via telephone, etc. However, they want to have an upright result for the world’s recognition so they have hired an independent auditing firm to check the vote counting result.
I think there is no problem for the Ha Long Bay, because one month after we called for people to vote for the bay by sending text messages, we got 24.09 million messages, a very impressive figure.
At the beginning, we expected to have around 5 million messages only, based on the result of similar campaigns. This is the effort of Vietnamese people and international friends.
With more than 24 million messages, Vietnam spent more than VND15 billion ($750,000), besides other expenses for organizing advertising campaigns for the bay. How do you think about the cost that we paid for the ‘new natural wonder of the world’ title?
The NewOpenWorld did not limit the number of voting messages that one person could send. Each message is cost VND630, with VND30 of tax. The remaining VND600 is partly shared to NewOpenWorld.
I think the cost is not high. We must see this as a tourism promotion task. The government annually spends VND50 billion ($2.5 million) for this task, compared with Malaysia’s $80 million, Thailand’s $70 million and Singapore’s nearly $60 million.
Since 2008, the government permitted the tourism sector to advertise Vietnamese tourism on CNN and BBC, with around $160,000/campaign and $200,000 for the latest campaign. However, the advertisement was broadcast on only one program on these channels.
Comparing with these events, the recent campaign for Ha Long bay is not costly at all. We want to develop the name Ha Long Bay with Vietnam’s tourism. If visitors do not go to Ha Long, they are considered to have not visited Vietnam yet.
What will we benefit from the new title for Ha Long bay?
The opportunity for Ha Long Bay has opened for four years. The number of tourists to this site is on the rise. I think that advertising has highly contributed to this.
Visitors to Ha Long bay still complain of being high charges for services, for pollution in the bay, etc. What will we do to deal with these issues?
Our Minister (Minister Hoang Tuan Anh) is very sad when he received letters of international tourists who complained about pollution or breeding bears and monkeys at some tourist sites in Vietnam. In Quang Ninh province, where hosts the Ha Long Bay, the local government has completely solved this issue. I believe that the province will heighten responsibility over tourism culture.
