National carrier Vietnam Airlines unveils new staff uniform

National carrier Vietnam Airlines has introduced a new uniform for its pilots and cabin crew after 15 years of using the red ao dai (traditional Vietnamese long dress).

The new uniform will be worn by staff on several flights from March 3 to 9 to gather feedback from passengers and the public.

The business class hostesses will wear a yellow dress, while those serving the economy class will wear blue. The uniforms for pilots and male flight attendants will also see a change in material.

The dress was designed by a team headed by well-known Vietnamese designer Minh Hanh, who specialises in ao dai.

Danang tells small hotels to register quality

The tourism authorities of Danang have told 160-170 hotels of one and two-star standards to register their quality for assessment.

The Danang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced the requirement at a meeting with local hotel operators on a price stabilization program in the lead up to an international fireworks contest slated for next month.

The department’s request for hotel quality registration is in line with a decision made by the city’s government last month to tighten the management of hotels and raise the quality of hotel services in Danang.

The current regulations require accommodation facilities to inform the authorities of their operations within 15 days after inauguration and register their quality for assessment no later than three months after the date of their opening, said Tran Chi Cuong, deputy director of the department.

But around 160-170 hotels of one and two-star standards in the city have yet to register for quality evaluation.

In line with the new regulations of the department, those hotels will have to submit their quality registrations to the department or seek permission to reschedule the deadline or they will face sanctions.

However, some said the regulations that require one-star hotels to have restaurants and two-star hotels to have conference rooms are strict.

Cuong said the department had proposed the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism consider revising the regulations to make them workable.

Kenya Airways targets Vietnamese market

Kenya Airways will commence a new route to Hanoi and become the first African nation to fly to Vietnam on March 30, bringing to five the number of its destinations in Asia.

With an extensive and well planned geographical network in both Africa and Asia, the airline is making a bid for the growing transit traffic between Vietnam and Africa, said airline CEO Mbuvi Ngunze.

He added that Vietnam has shown a considerable and stable economic growth over the recent years and that the airline wants to leverage on the growth, particularly on the increased trade with Africa.

The airline will fly three times a week to Vietnam while its SkyTeam partners will be used as a bridgehead to the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, China and Singapore.

The flights will depart from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi at 10:20pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and arrive at Noi Bai International Airport at 11.55am next day with a return flight on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Kenya Airways- one of the three biggest African carriers- currently operates flights to 51 cities in African, European and Asian nations.

Vietnam promotes tourism in India

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) and the Vietnam Embassy in India are to launch to open a pavilion featuring Vietnamese tourism products at the Global Exhibition on Services (GES) to be held in India on April 23-25.

From April 26-28, the VNAT will also organize a Vietnam- India tourism seminar in NewDelhi aiming to introduce the country’s tourism potential in Hyderabad and Chennai as the better way to foster links between the two countries’ localities and firms operating in the field.

Attendees include 100 representatives from Indian travel operators and delegates from 10 Vietnamese tourism firms, the VNAT and the Vietnam Embassy in India,

The VNAT’s has recently intensified tourism promotion activities in India through seminars and delegation exchange.

Southern hub to kick off annual tourism festival

The 11th Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Festival will be held at September 23 Park by the City’s Department of Tourism and some units between March 26th and 29th.

The event, includes an array of highlights, such as a program “Impression to world heritages in Vietnam” in response to the National Tourism Year 2015, “Connecting world heritages in Vietnam,” an exhibition on 40 years of Ho Chi Minh City’s tourism sector, a festival honoring the city’s tourist sites, and an award ceremony for businesses with outstanding contributions to the development of the city’s tourism sector.

Besides, visitors could enjoy many special artistic performances and folk values of Vi-Giam, Gong space culture in Tay Nguyen (the Central Highlands), Ca Tru ceremonial singing and Hue's royal court music, which have been recognized as intangible cultural heritages of humanity.

The organizers gather about 150 booths from Departments of Culture, Sports and Tourism; Tourism Promotion Centres and Sporting Associations from different localities nationwide, and representative offices of tourist agencies from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism said over the past ten years, the city’s annual tourism festival has become a good opportunity for provinces, cities, and businesses to introduce their tourism products to international and domestic visitors.

Seawalking in Vietnam’s Nha Trang a new tourist draw

A diving firm in Nha Trang City in central Vietnam has piloted a new service which allows tourists to walk on the seabed and explore the rich marine life at the same time.

The service is being run by Holiday Diving Co. Ltd. on a 90-day pilot basis, starting on Sunday.

Le Hong Tai, the company director, said on March 8 that the rafts on which the service is provided are positioned on Hon Mot Islet, located off the city’s Vinh Hoa Ward.

What holiday seawalkers need for such a trip, which lasts between 15 and 20 minutes, is an oxygen tank and a specially designed helmet.

The helmet weighs up to 40 kilograms but gives the seawalkers the feeling of bearing the weight of merely four kilograms while walking underwater.

Guides will accompany tourists on their trip, which provides them with a rare chance to admire schools of fish and coral at close proximity in a sea expanse of around 50 square meters.

Truong Kinh, director of the Nha Trang Bay Management, believes the new service is a highly compelling, ecologically-friendly tourist activity.

Since January, many visitors to Nha Trang, the capital city of Khanh Hoa Province, have included these two forms of entertainment in their must-try list: sea diving and exploring the craft of pearl mollusk culture.

Hoang Gia Pearl Farming Co., a local travel company, has offered tours that provide tourists with the chance to experience sea diving and behold pearl-yielding mollusks in the city.

The experiences include exploring how pearl mollusks are cultivated, catching the invertebrate, and slicing them open to get their pearls.

HCM City conference spotlights tourism globalisation, localisation

A crowd of experts, researchers, scholars and managers working in tourism from Asia, America and Europe gathered at a recent event in Ho Chi Minh City to contribute their ideas on how to promote tourism globalisation and localisation.

The conference, co-organised by Sai Gon Culture, Arts and Tourism and Charles De Gaulle-Lille 3 University of France, received over 150 papers, focusing on Vietnam’s tourism in the context of tourism globalisation and localisation, and issues related to travel, hotel and restaurant services, and human resources training in the field.

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh, in his speech, highlighted the strong growth of Vietnam’s tourism industry in recent years, and underlined the country’s goal to turn tourism into its spearhead economic sector.

Dr. Vu Khac Chuong, rector of the Sai Gon Culture, Art and Tourism College said while globalisation is an irreversible trend, it does not mean the unique characteristics of each culture and region should fall into oblivion. Rather, globalisation means the establishment of universal values and standards while the specific values of each culture continue to be reiterated and preserved.

Participants agreed that tourism globalisation is based on promoting globally the respect for and preservation of unique values of cultures and ecological systems, thus creating appropriate actions for sustainable tourism development.

Int'l arrivals to Vietnam fall 10% on drops from China, Russia

Vietnam welcomed around 10 percent fewer international tourists in the first two months of this year than a year earlier, as the tourism industry posted drops in the number of Chinese and Russian vacationers.

As of the end of last month, more than 1.45 million international tourists had visited Vietnam, according to data released by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Of these, 1.17 million traveled by air, down 7.3 percent compared to the same period last year. The number of tourists traveling by sea fell a massive 39.2 percent year on year, whereas the fall in the road segment was 18.2 percent.

In February alone, when Vietnam celebrated the Lunar New Year (Tet) from the middle of the month, the country received 756,000 international tourist visits, up 7.9 percent from a month earlier but down 10.2 percent from February 2014.

The number of domestic tourists in the two-month period, meanwhile, was 12.5 million. Total tourist spending in the two months was VND67.79 trillion (US$3.16 billion), a 6.6 percent surge from the same period last year.

The Vietnamese tourism industry enjoyed rises in the number of holidaymakers from Finland (up 59.2 percent), South Korea (55.1 percent), New Zealand (44.4 percent), Italy (44 percent), and Spain (31.7 percent).

However, most of its traditional markets, such as China, Hong Kong, and Russia, accounted for the sharpest falls.

The number of Chinese tourists visiting Vietnam in the first two months of this year dropped 40.3 percent from a year earlier, while the respective plunges of the Hong Kong and Russia markets were 51 percent and 25.7 percent.

Hoang Thi Phong Thu, chairman of Anh Duong Co., a tour organizer that targets Russian customers, said the company only managed to bring 3,500 Russian vacationers to Vietnam in February, compared to 6,000 a month earlier.

The figure will continue shrinking to 600 tourists this month, and around 100 for April, Thu sadly added.

At this time last year, as many as 6,000 tourists from Russia spent their holidays on such famous beaches as Mui Ne, Nha Trang, and Phu Quoc, she said.

Anh Duong Co. thus had to cease its air charter service between Russian cities and Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Quoc, a famed tourism island off southern Vietnam, at the end of January.

Similarly, only 117,566 Chinese tourists visited Vietnam last month, a massive 50.7 percent decline from a year earlier.