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PART I:
VIETNAM AS A TOURIST DESTINATIONāAN ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE
Rice fields, with their regularly spaced rows, are some of the most beautiful and most typical sights in Vietnam.
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Chapter 1
The Pros and Cons of Vietnam Tourism
STATISTICS ON TOURISM IN VIETNAM, THAILAND, AND CAMBODIA
Although tourism has been increasing in Vietnam over the past decade, especially compared to its neighbor Thailand and to many countries in Western Europe, Vietnam still has relatively few tourists. In this section, the development of tourism in Vietnam and in its neighboring countries of Thailand and Cambodia are addressed. The problems Vietnam faces in developing its tourism industry and the positives of visiting Vietnam as its tourism industry evolves are considered.
The following list shows that tourism has been growing rapidly in Vietnam in recent years. It lists the number of visitors to Vietnam (rounded off to the nearest thousand) per year. In the course of only three years, from 1999 to 2002, tourism increased by almost 1 million visitors (see <www.vietnamtourism.com>). (We cannot be certain of the accuracy of these statistics, I should add.)
1999 | 1,781,000 |
2000 | 2,140,000 |
2001 | 2,330,000 |
2002 | 2,627,000 |
It is useful to compare Vietnam with Thailand, where tourism is much more highly developed. The following figures are for Thailand during the same years (rounded off to the nearest thousand).
1999 | 8,580,000 |
2000 | 9,578,000 |
2001 | 10,132,000 |
2002 | 10,872,000 |
Thailand has approximately four times as many visitors as Vietnam (see <www2.tat.or.th/stat/web/static_index.php>). On the other hand, in 2002, Cambodia had only 466,000 visitors, so it lags well behind Vietnam and Thailand as a tourist venue, even though it has one of the greatest tourist attractions in the world, Angkor Wat (see <www.embassy.org/cambodia.tourismbrief.html>).
Although it is increasing, tourism to Asia still is much less developed than tourism in Europe and other countries, such as Canada and Mexico. The following list details the number of tourists and population for the year 2001 of some major tourist destinations and for Thailand and Vietnam (see <www.world-tourism.org/facts/trends/destination.htm>).
Country | Number of Visitors | Population |
France | 75.2 million | 58 million |
Spain | 50.1 million | 40 million |
United States | 44.9 million | 270 million |
Italy | 39.0 million | 57 million |
China | 33.2 million | 1280 million |
United Kingdom | 22.8 million | 58 million |
Mexico | 19.8 million | 100 million |
Austria | 18.2 million | 8 million |
Thailand | 10.1 million | 61 million |
Vietnam | 2.3 million | 77 million |
Clearly, tourism in Vietnam, even though it is growing rapidly, still is less well developed than tourism in many other countries. These figures also suggest that the possibilities of tourism increasing rapidly in Vietnam are considerable; Vietnam hopes to attract as many as 9 million tourists by the year 2010.
VISITORS IN VIETNAM BY COUNTRY IN 2001
The following list shows the ātop tenā countries that sent visitors to Vietnam in 2001 and offers the number of visitors (rounded off to the nearest thousand). These figures do not distinguish between tourists and business travelers (see <www.vietnamtourism.com/e_pages/tourist/general/sltk_kQ5Thang2002.htm>).
Country of Origin | Number of Visitors |
China | 672,000 |
United States | 230,000 |
Taiwan | 200,000 |
Japan | 152,000 |
France | 99,000 |
Australia | 84,000 |
Cambodia | 76,000 |
Korea | 75,000 |
United Kingdom | 64,000 |
Laos | 40,000 |
Germany | 39,000 |
China leads, as might be expected, because it borders Vietnam and has many commercial relationships with it. China is followed by the United States, which has recently developed commercial relationships with Vietnam. Also, many Viet Kieu return to visit friends and introduce their country of origin to their children. France also sends many tourists to Vietnam, which can be explained in part by Franceās historical relationship with Vietnam.
According to statistics found on the Web site of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States rank in the order listed in terms of amounts of money spent on tourism, so it is reasonable to expect to find tourists from these countries in many different lands (Berger, 2004, pp. 58-59).
Residents of the United Kingdom, on a per capita basis, are the great tourists of the world, followed closely by Germany. People from the United States spend approximately $60 billion dollars a year on tourism, but because there are approximately 270 million of them, it works out to around $202 per person. Residents of the United Kingdom spend approximately $37 billion dollars a year on tourism, but the smaller population (59 million) results in a figure of approximately $637 per capita.
Tourism is an enormous industry. As Eric J. Leed writes in The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (1991):
Travel, in the form of tourism, is becoming increasingly pervasive in our world. By the turn of the millennium, it will be the most important sector of world trade, surpassing oil, and is currently the second largest retail industry in the United States. The impression of the commonality of travel is intensified when one includes in the ranks of travelers those who obviously belong but do not appear in tourism statisticsābusiness travelers, nomads, commuters, itinerant laborers, refugees, members of the armed services, diplomatic personnel, temporary and permanent immigrants. (pp.1-2)
When you add these kinds of travelers together, you can understand why tourism is such a large industry. Leedās book was written in 1991, and since then mass tourism has become even more highly developed.
SOME PROBLEMS OF VIETNAMāS TOURISM INDUSTRY
Vietnam faces a number of difficulties as a popular tourist destination. The following sections list and briefly discuss some of them. The focus here is on how typical mainstream (middle-class and middle-aged) Americans and other tourists who are contemplating travel to Southeast Asia tend to perceive Vietnam.
Lack of Infrastructure
In a sense, for mainstream tourism to flourish in a country, everything must be in place at the same time. By this I mean a country must have good roads, a well-developed transportation system (air and train), well-staffed tourism companies, and quality hotels, in addition to sites of interest. Countries without a well-developed infrastructure can attract some touristsāadventurous types, people with special interests, and backpackers (who donāt spend much money and therefore arenāt as coveted as middle-class tourists), but not mainstream tourists in large numbers.
Vietnamās railroad system is very primitive and many trains donāt travel at more than twenty or thirty miles per hour. The roads in some places are in very poor condition. However, government officials in Vietnam are aware of the importance of tourism and now are making rapid progress in developing its infrastructure and in training people to work in the tourism industry.
Connie Mok and Terry Lam (1998) list some of the difficulties the Vietnam tourism industry faces: āThere are a number of constraints hindering Vietnamās tourism development. They include the poor infrastructure, lax legal systems, graft, the lack of accommodation facilities of international standards, and inadequate skilled workers and qualified management peopleā (<http://www.hotel-online.com/Trends/JournalTravelTourismMarketing/HotelDevelopmentVietnam_Nov1997.html>). Since this article was written, Vietnam seems to have made progress in developing its tourism industry and is now educating a considerable number of students majoring in tourism, building hotels, and developing sites of touristic interest.
General Fear of Third World Countries
Vietnam is generally seen as a very poor country and many tourists are afraid that in a third world, or underdeveloped, country they will not be able to find suitable hotels, that adequate medical facilities wonāt be available, that they will be besieged by beggars, that they face personal risk of robbery, that they wonāt be able to buy things they need, and that they will encounter numerous other difficulties, such as wide-scale flooding after rainstorms. In this respect, of course, Vietnam is no different from many other third world countries, where personal safety is a continual problem. The following discussion of the material in guidebooks regarding the dangers of travel in Vietnam demonstrates this anxiety in rather graphic images.
Ignorance Regarding Vietnam
Many āproblemsā just discussed are due to faulty information people receive about Vietnam, its culture, and its attractions. It may be a third world country, but it also has excellent tourism companies and many wonderful sitesāfrom Halong Bay and Hue to beautiful beaches. Vietnam has been rapidly building hotels in important tourist sites and now offers hotels of all kindsāfrom super-luxurious ones to middle-range, three-star hotels, down to very primitive hotels. In some areas, such as Ho Chi Minh City, hotels are found in abundance; in other cities, hotels are scarce.
Vietnam War Memories and Images
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