Hanoi (VNA) 🙈– The aviation sector has officially resumed a series of international commercial flights, creating an important condition for the early recover of tourism. However, the question is can tourism make an immediate recovery after a long exhaustion at the bottom because of the COVID-19? And a more important question is that in order to obtain a sustainable recovery in the new context, what should firms do?

Proposals

Reopening does not necessarily means an immediate recovery as tourism needs time to adapt itself to the new context. Especially, it needs a comprehensive and long-term action plan from management offices. This buffer will help accelerate a rapid and sustainable opening of tourism, according to experts. However, the tourism firms are facing various challenges. Lux Group CEO Pham Ha said the biggest challenges to the firms now are capital, human resources and supply chain disruption. In Ha’s opinion, Vietnam’s tourism should re-define its national trademark towards quality, focusing on target and stable markets when international tourism is reopened. According to experts, in the immediate future, for a successful opening, the market should be divided into small sections which can recover quickly, strongly, sustainable and come in time with seasons. Many representatives expressed their hope for the state management office to issue, at an early date, concrete plans on welcoming foreign tourists. The policies should be consistent from the central to the grassroots levels, simple and favourable to foreign tourists such as visa waiver, they stressed.

Recovery roadmap shaped

At the moment, domestic tourism is seeing signs of vigorous recovery, especially during the recent traditional lunar New Year. Yet, VietSense CEO Nguyen Van Tai held that most of the holiday makers made the trips by themselves without having them arranged by travel firms. They only buy the service from the firms when making inbound and outbound trips – the main market share of the firms. To anticipate the recovery chances, tourism firms have initiated and readied plans to welcome tourists. Tai said after the peak of the 4th wave of the pandemic, his firm focused on the two main service sections: tours for foreign tourists coming to Vietnam and packaged outbound tours when conditions permit. For inbound services, the company has by now completed all the trans-Vietnam tours which will last for from seven to 15 days and tours to major destinations for from two to five days for travellers from English- and Russian-speaking markets. For outbound tours, it has prepared departure schedules and ordered services from partners in Dubai, Russia and Thailand for the period starting from March. The two sections are now seeing considerable investment into marketing and advertisement through online channels. Vietravel will provide charter services to a 180-strong pilgrimage team to India which will start from Hanoi on February 26 and another 45-strong group to Dubai starting from Ho Chi Minh City on March 4. Those are the first two outbound groups served by the company in this year. Meanwhile, at the Saigontourist Group, the business in the field of accommodation service is seeing positive signs of recovery. Its booking rate is about 30% higher than in the pre-pandemic period. By now, about 100 of its establishments in accommodation, travel, food and recreation all over the country have reopened their door in the new normal. Saigontourist has also resumed outbound tours starting from Feburary. It can be said that the whole service system of the tourism industry has been reactivated step by step to welcome travellers. The approval by the government of the plan on totally reopening the tourism sector from the middle of March has kindled the belief on the chance of rapid recovery and development of the industry in general and the accommodation service sector in particular./.