Vietnam launches million dollar tourism promotion junket
DANANG - Vietnam launched a million dollar tourism promotion drive Friday, flying in journalists and travel agents from
around the world for a five-day festival on the central coast.
The junket is intended to showcase the region's three world heritage sites -- the historic port of Hoi An, the
Cham temples of My Son and the former imperial capital of Hue -- as Vietnam seeks to emulate its Asian
neighbours' success in attracting foreign holidaymakers.
The 45 journalists and 38 travel agents will be treated to a full moon festival amid the historic shophouses of
Hoi An where European traders did business with their Chinese and Japanese counterparts in the early years of
Western penetration of the Far East.
The town's power supply will be cut off after dark, leaving the tiny port lit only by thousands of brilliantly
coloured Chinese lanterns, in what has become a monthly draw for overseas tourists.
The regional capital of Danang -- Vietnam's third city -- is to host a beach volleyball tournament and other
events to highlight the huge potential of the country's long tropical coastline, while in Hue the foreign guests will
be taken out on the city's Perfume River in barges used by the imperial family ousted in 1945.
The cost of the junket is being shared by the central government, the provincial authorities and state-owned
Vietnam Airlines and comes to an estimated million dollars without counting the cost of hotel rooms or flights.
But critics say the promotion drive is misplaced as it is not a lack of awareness of Vietnam's attractions that
keeps the communist state's tourism industry lagging behind its regional rivals but a shortage of infrastructure
and the continuing legacy of state control.
Vietnam welcomed 1.18 million foreign tourists in the first six months of 2001, an 8.5 percent increase on the
same period of last year, but far less than Thailand or the Philippines.
Visa restrictions and a continuing paucity of international flights remain the biggest obstacles to overseas
investment in the tourism sector, World Bank representative Andrew Steer said in June.
Danang's new international airport still welcomes just six overseas flights a week, from Hong Kong and
Bangkok.
And until a new tunnel is completed through the Bach Ma mountains, Hue remains a bone-shaking seven-hour
drive away along the country's dilapidated coastal highway.
Vietnam also continues to operate a two-tier pricing system for hotel rates and rail, road and air fares which
obliges foreigners to pay as much as twice the normal tariffs paid by nationals, years after the system was
abandoned in communist neighbour China.
State-owned Vietnam Airlines has now announced a major expansion plan and the government is considering a
pilot scheme which would waive visa requirements for French and Japanese nationals.
But repeated pledges to phase out two-tier pricing have yet to be implemented.
Agence France Presse - August 31, 2001.
|