June is the 13th month that international visitors to Vietnam decreased consecutively since March 6/2014. This is considered unprecedented “incident”  in recent years, Said officers: “Many Vietnam Local Tour Operator, hotels, restaurants… now are claiming that their business is going very bad” So what is the reasons and solutions for this problem.

Generally, in the first 6 months of 2015, international visitors to Vietnam is estimated to 3.8 million, lower by 11.3% from the same period of 2014, while arrivals by air decreased 9.1 %; Road fell 19.7%; by sea went down 26.5%. Especially the Russian market continued to decline. Currently, a lot of resort owners and luxury hotels like Nha Trang, Mui Ne are “crying” because of foreign tourists plummeted.

The main reason comes from objective factors such as the decline of the high share markets (China accounts for 1/4 guests total number of international visitors to Vietnam) and the Chinese-speaking market is not yet recovered. May 5/2014 milestone reminds us to the tensions over the South China Sea that took place between last year. This event is probably the biggest causes affecting large Chinese market for Vietnam’s tourism and so far it has yet to regain balance.

The second largest inbound market is Russia (average annual increase of 25-30%) is still in difficulty because Russia is facing huge challenges in the political economy. Additionally, MERS disease in Korea, recently continued to cause “challenge” for Vietnam tourism. This makes Vietnam tourism growth in the first 6 months of 2015 has not had a positive signal as we expected.

The Asian markets have decreased the number of guests including China decreased by 30.2%; South Korea decreased by 10.6%; Thailand fell 5.1%; Japan fell 5.3%. Visitors from European countries including France dropped nearly 50%; from Germany, Holland and Belgium fell by 25-30%. Only three Scandinavian countries are Norway, Sweden and Finland have increased the number of visitors compared to the previous month. Arrivals from the US rose 31.1% while 12.1% decreased from Canada. Mers ongoing service in Korea and Asia is regarded as one of the reasons why tourists’ restrictions to travel on this occasion.

Despite of beautiful landscape, friendly people and non-stop renovating effort, Vietnam tourism development is still in problems for 13 months without seeing any changes for brighter future

It is hard to deny the fact that many foreign visitors to Vietnam still carry psychological insecurity and reticence with the local services. Moreover, creating products with softer prices to suit guests’ pockets is still a big problem to Vietnam local business. One important factor is the lack of advertisement campaigns that can bring Vietnam tourism to the world which should be done with government power and the expensive airline coming to Vietnam. 

In Vietnam, still lives the method of “everyone cares only his business” and they hardly get connected. Moreover, The cost of investment is so high and most businesses are small leading to very weak competition strength.

We do hope that the local government is going to work hard to solve problems of Vietnam Tourism that lead to the decline 13 months in a row. When everything is so clear and will get solved out soon so that the Vietnam Local Tour Operator, hotels… can boost their business to more global tourists!