VietNamNet Bridge – The short clips promoting Vietnam’s tourism implemented by a South Korean travel firm has moved the Vietnamese Internet community. Why can’t Vietnam do such interesting clips?

Vietnamese beaches, in fact, are very beautiful

The 3-minute shows the blue sea and wonderful beaches in Nha Trang, the impressive images of the Long Son Pagoda, Thap Ba Po Nagar and Hon Tam Island. It shows two South Korean girls enjoying discovering the life of local people, eating tasty food, playing sports and dropping into high end resorts.

Even Nha Trang’s local residents and Vietnamese tourists feel amazed and excited about the charm of Nha Trang when they see the images.

Doan Thanh Tra, Head of the Planning and Marketing Division of Saigontourist, said she had not thought Nha Trang was so beautiful until seeing the images of the clip. Tra said the clip is so persuasive that she wants to return to Nha Trang in some days, though she many times visited Nha Trang before.

Tra said Saigontourist, like many other travel firms in Vietnam, find it very difficult to advertise Vietnam’s tourism in foreign countries. They need to introduce to clients the potentials of Vietnam’s tourism, the characteristics and cultural histories of every locality, but they don’t have high quality images and clips to persuade clients.

The clips they have in hand simply introduce about the destinations, while they still cannot help attract tourists to Vietnam.

Travel firms understand that their introductions would be much more convincing, if they can show images to clients. “Seeing is believing.” However, their problem is that they don’t know how to have such products.

“No focus” is the comment of many experts about the way Vietnam promotes tourism. The authors of the clips seem to be always very “covetous” when they try to show too many images and tell about too many destinations in the same clip. As a result, the clips cannot attract viewers to the main themes and make viewers puzzled about the destinations they should go to.

According to Vu The Binh, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Tourism Association, Vietnam has not had many clips to promote tourism, except the one made on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of Thang Long – Hanoi.

Binh has noted that most of the clips are just the documents talking about the destinations in Vietnam, delivered at trade fairs and conferences.

“It’s the time for Vietnam to build up in-depth clips to advertise the most impressive destinations in Vietnam, instead of showing the addresses of the destinations and display the addresses at variety stores,” Binh said.

Travel firms also agree that Vietnam should attract tourists’ attention to the most important destinations. Though clips focus on some destinations, but they would give an overall image about Vietnam’s tourism.

Vietnam lacks both money and professionalism to promote tourism

Luu Duc Ke, Director of Hanoitourist, has noted that there are two problems in Vietnam’s tourism – the limited budget for advertisement, and the lack of professionalism.

Ke said that the budget allocated for tourism advertisement is always very scanty. However, Vietnam does not always think about what it should do with the modest money to gain the highest possible effects.

Instead of making high quality publications and clips, which are believed to have long term effects, the management agencies decided to post ad pieces on TV channels which are very costly.

In this case, Vietnamese seem not to understand the saying “to live within one’s means”.

Nang Luong Moi