A seminar organized by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism at Hanoi was conducted on the 3rd week of August centered on “positioning the Vietnam tourism brand”. The activity was mainly held with aims to implement a development strategy for the country’s tourism until 2020 and at the same time build a marketing strategy that will carry on towards 2030. According to Nguyen Van Tuan, head of VNAT, the importance for Vietnam to become a competitive, professional trademark in the travel industry should be greatly recognized because of the inconsistent growth of its tourism sector in the past 7 years. Though figures show the increase of visits to the country, revenues from such activities remained low.

It was recorded that 677,000 foreigners arrived  to the country in the early days of August, which is 22% up against the same month of 2012. Most of these visits are from Russia (up 63.1%), China (33.1%), Indonesia (25.6%), Thailand (24.2%) and New Zealand (21.9%). The total number of domestic tourists also increased by 11.7%. The development and promotion of the brand in order to establish an image of the country as an impressive destination is a vital issue for any country’s tourism sector. The country’s tourism industry was born from the ’60s, but since then Vietnam has not yet built a national tourism brand because promoting tourism is largely leaned on traditional approaches. Several viewpoints were raised during the seminar.

Vu The Binh, chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, emphasized that the cooperation between authorities, enterprises, associations and other concerned groups is highly necessary. Florian Sengstschmid, a branding expert from the EU’s Environmentally and Socially Responsible Tourism Capacity Development Programme (ESRT), explained that the country needed to better develop its tourism products. Nguyen Quoc Ky, general director of Vietravel, pointed out how popular Vietnam cuisine is all over the world and the industry can be successful concentrating in food as the most key element when competing with other countries rather than investing in other aspects that would entail large financial capital and time.

For Tran Van Long, general director of Viet Media Travel, popular destinations such as Halong Bay and Phong Nha Cave were already popular and that the country should work on better promotion of such sites to attract first-time visitors while giving previous travelers a reason to return. Tuan recognizes that the task is clearly not easy, but having the best understanding of brands and brand building and doing it right is a good start, recognizing the importance of cooperation between agencies as earlier stressed in the seminar. Vietnam’s tourism industry aims to serve 7.2 million foreign visitors and 35 million domestic tourists in 2013 with a revenue goal of $9.5 billion. Such projection is at 18.75 percent compared to the previous year.