The Vietnam Tourism Association is holding a forum to come up with ideas as to how to kickstart the country’s tourism industry and attract international visitors lost to the pandemic crisis.
A two-day conference, this week, in Ho Chi Minh City, aims to raise solutions over how to redevelop Vietnam’s international tourism industry and to allow businesses to enter co-operation agreements to develop tourism products.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Association (HTA), which is co-presenting the summit, the gathering is also aimed at strengthening ties between travel businesses.
It also aims to keep all stakeholders fully informed and up to date on Vietnam’s support policies for the tourism sector, to allow it the chance to attract more domestic and foreign tourists to Vietnam in the aftermath of the pandemic shutdown.
Vietnam is also offering free foreign language lessons to tour guides.
Just last week, the Daily Mail reported that a hotel in Thailand – the Harmonize Hotel in the northern city of Chiang Mai – has slashed its room rates to just over 2c per night in a bid to claw back tourism lost to the pandemic. The quality hotel is also, effectively, paying guests to use its restaurants.
In total, nearly 50 hotels in the Chiang Mai region are cutting their nightly room prices by up to 70%.
The local tourism board said the move will, hopefully, lift average room occupancy rates by 55%.
Chiang Mai is one of the most visited areas of Thailand. Before the pandemic, in 2019, the region attracted 10 million visitors – around a quarter of all of Thailand’s visitors that year.
Thailand has been leaving no stone unturned in its bid to attract international guests – from marketing to hitherto untapped markets like Saudi Arabia and India; to legalising cannabis for medicinal use.
Hong Kong is also making moves to fast-track its business and leisure tourism recovery; mainly by lowering its mandatory hotel quarantine period, for visitors, from 7 days to just three days. However, local business groups want the government to do more to solve the crisis.
Flight bookings to Hong Kong immediately surged by nearly 250% after the announcement on Tuesday.
