“The superfine way to guidance in Vietnam is transaction a ride and attractive a spark from the northwesterly to southeasterly,” an odd advice.
Lorijon Bacchi, Director of Visa Company in Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia said that she read the odd advice on tripadviser.com, one of the most prestigious websites to global travelers.
When she came to Vietnam, she heard the joke of Vietnamese tour guides “museums in the morning, and water puppetry in the evening. Finally, she understood the meaning of the odd advice. Vietnam has many interesting for travelers to discover. However, it would be better to do this themselves.
In 2011, Visa conducted the sixth survey on the travel tendency in the globe. This was for the third time Vietnam was among the countries for the survey.
Vietnam really an attractive destination
The survey has pointed out that the wonderful natural landscapes, attractive tour promotion packages and the stable political situation are the biggest advantages of Vietnam for the next two years.
The travelers, who plan to go to Vietnam in the time to come, said that they feel elated to join outdoors activities, culinary tours to discover and enjoy the specialty food of different localities. They also said that they feel excited to enjoy the bustling life at night in the country.
The survey provided concrete and useful figures to the tourism policy makers of countries and to travel firms as well. Those, who are interested, can obtain the concrete information about the age, marriage status, financial capability of travelers. The survey has also pointed out that the problems of the nations, and the travelers’ tendency in the near future.
Bad advertisement
Ineffective advertisement has been pointed out as one of the biggest problems of Vietnam’s tourism.
Only 271 foreigners out of the 11,620 polled people said that they once traveled to Vietnam in the last two years, and 338 said they planned to go to Vietnam in the next two years. The low percentages show that the understanding about VIentam’s tourism remains limited.
Especially, the report has also pointed out that Singapore, Thailand, Australia and South Korea are the countries whose people are most interested in traveling to Vietnam.
Visa’s survey has shown a quite surprising thing. Foreign travelers still keep biased view about Vietnam. They think that political uncertainties and the terrorism risks are much higher than the average level in the world.
Nguyen Quy Phuong, Director of the Travel Department of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism VNAT, said that it is to blame Vietnam itself for the misunderstanding, because this shows that Vietnam still cannot do the advertisement well.
Phuong said that when uncertainties occurred in Cambodia, he once thought that travelers may think Vietnam is not safe as well and they would not choose Vietnam as the tourism destinations.
“I believe that the percentage of people who keep this misunderstanding is not high, but we need to do everything we can right now to settle the problem,” Phuong said.
Bad services
On the sideline of the press conference where Visa released the report, Mrs Lorijon talked about her feeling as a traveler in Vietnam.
When she first came to Hanoi, she contacted a travel firm and hired a tour guide. However, she felt boring with the trip just after one day. She believed that there were many things interesting in Hanoi, but she could not approach them.
After that, she decided not to go with the tour guide any more, but tried to discover Hanoi herself. And she always feels excited the next times when she plans to return to Hanoi. She has a lot of plans on where to go and what to eat. All the things about Hanoi have been discovered by herself.
She said she will certainly return to Vietnam. But how many people would return to Vietnam like her, and how many people would not?
