Sustainable Tourism Development In Vietnam: Challenges And Opportunities

Defining Sustainable Tourism Development

Question:

Write The four principles of sustainable tourism development.

In the terms of the economic activity, sustainable tourism development is described as the activity that is related to tourism that meet certain principle in order to fulfill the demand of diverse stakeholders and also contribute to by and large sustainable development. One can define Sustainable tourism development as an integrative perception that helps in balancing the social, financial as well environmental reliability and development and helps to integrate growth. Some careful measures must be taken into consideration while defining sustainable development. Until and unless the communal and the natural environment are conserved, it is not possible to obtain sustainable development (Mowforth & Munt, 2015).

1. In order to gain sustainable tourism it is important to reduce the impact of tourism activity on the environment in order to acquire the ecological sustainability. This can be done by preserving as well as enhancing the protection through the return of a part of the revenues towards the sheltered area. The form of tourism that does not affect the environment should be practiced.
2. The negative impact of tourism must be diminished on the local community as well as its members so that social sustainability can be obtained. By developing, the forms of tourism that do not distress and upset the everyday life of the inhabitants at the tourist destination sustainability of tourism can be obtained. The antagonistic situations should also be avoided.
3. The negative activity of tourism on culture as well as tradition should also be avoided in order to gain the cultural sustainability. The tourism, which is capable of determining the genuineness and individualism of local cultures, should be developed. This in turn helps to avoid the infiltration with exterior cultural influences.

The economic benefits of the domestic population should be maximized in order to enhance tourism. This in turn will help to gain economic sustainability. The sustainable tourism is meant to serve the fortification and the economic expansion of the sheltered areas (NiedzióÅ‚ka, 2014).

The stakeholders who are involved in the tourism development in Vietnam are the tourists, the tourist operators and the government. The sector, which includes the trade sectors as well as the public sectors, is also included. In the sustainable tourism development, the stakeholders are divided into suppliers a well as the marketing mediators and facilitators, associate of the public and domestic and the foreign clients. The main role of the suppliers is to provide all the necessary details, which are based on the desires of the tourists. The public and the private sector play a significant role in the development of the tourism industry in Vietnam. This sector helps in determining the price (Kusakabe et al., 2015).

The difficulty that takes place due to the involvement of various stakeholders leads to the deprived understanding of the difficulty that takes place in the tourism industry. Tourism thus becomes complex occurrence due to the demands and the perception of the diverse stakeholders, which includes the tourists, the tourist operators and the government. This in turn leads to a challenge to operate a sustainable tourism development. The lack of knowledge, the lack of financial plan, clash as well as the lack of long-term development between the diverse stakeholders leads to the barrier to association in the tourism industry. In order to avoid the conflict, it is very important to gain knowledge as well being tourist they must have a good budget to fulfill their desires. The government should improve the tourism to lead to development in order to avoid the barrier.

In Vietnam, the tourism industry has been identified as one of the largest industry that has been growing with each passing day. It has helped Vietnam to get more earnings in terms of the foreign exchange and the tourism industry has helped in creating jobs for the unemployed. The development of the tourism industry in Vietnam increased the GDP of the country. The benefit of the tourism development is that it helps in eradicating poverty and links many sectors of the state economy. As per the research, the tourism industry in Vietnam is comparatively young with only about 40 years of noteworthy growth. However, Vietnam is one of the main countries in Asia to declare the significance of tourism (Mason, 2015).

As part of the general policy of liberalization, Vietnam started to support tourism. The opening of the tourism industry in Vietnam had resulted in the momentous growth in the country. As per the report during the period 1975-1985, the tourism sector of Vietnam was cut off from the non-communist world. The international tourist would rarely go to Vietnam for trade or luxury. However, slowly the tourism sector of Vietnam started to flourish as it started facing competition from its rivals. The government of Vietnam took the responsibility of the development of the tourism sector. It took the responsibility of planning of the tourism as well as the construction of the tourism sector and the development (Kusakabe, 2014).

Stakeholders in Vietnam’s Tourism Industry

The state-owned trade of tourism was rationalized into a strong group of tourism that performed efficiently within the global competitive market. The government introduced some innovative policies and strategies. The development of the tourism industry in Vietnam led to the development of the private sectors and as a result, the tourism industry in Vietnam has been characterized by rapid annual expansion (Truong, 2013).

	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	Annual rate of growth
Total number of visitors	13,350	14,040	15,629	15,929	17,429	18,379	7.2%
Global arrivers	2,150	2,340	2,629	2,429	2,929	3,479	8.7%
Local visitors	11,300	11,800	14,000	14,500	15,500	15,900	6.8
Income of tourism	908 Mil  US$	1,109 Mil  US$	1,142 Mil  US$	1,280 Mil  US$	1,434 Mil  US$	1,594 Mil  US$	12.9%

The above data has been provided by the General Statistical office of Vietnam. In the year 2000, the size and the scale of the tourism in Vietnam expanded beyond the expectation of the government. The number of tourist increased to 2.13 million in the year 2000 from 250,000 in the year 1990. This in turn led to the increase in the income in Vietnam. As a result, the development of the tourism industry, the Vietnam tourism industry enjoyed a strong expansion in the tourism acknowledgment. It has also led to the enhancement of the financial sectors, which in turn increased the service percentage within the national economic organization. The tourism industry development impacted the country positively thus increasing jobs for the stakeholders (Nguyen et al., 2014).

The Vietnam tourism is generally regarded as a labor-intensive industry and it helped to generate a full-time employment in the restaurants, travel agencies as well as the guiding services. In the local communities, the people residing in Vietnam are gaining from the tourism industry as they are also getting some part time jobs, which are persuaded by tourism (Murphy, 2013).

The development of the tourism industry also helped in promoting the indirect employment, the effect of which is much greater than that of the direct employment (Goodall & Ashworth, 2013).

The tourism planning process should mainly include a decision making procedure between the tourism sector and the other parts of the economy as well as between the various sorts of tourism. The planning and development of tourism can become challenging for the government (Fletcher et al., 2013).

The tourism planning should include the following:

1. Wide-Ranging Development – it is an outlook of planning that takes on a system tradition in all the aspects of provincial tourism, which includes the capabilities, services as well as the institutional fundamentals that are planned in a wide-ranging manner.
2. Community-Based Planning – it is that type of planning where the locally defined objectives and the local enlargement actions are an essential part of tourism planning (Otto et al., 2013)
3. Incremental Planning – this type of planning allows for a high level of inevitability as well as elasticity (Hall, 2014).
4. Collaborative planning – in this type of planning the decision-making procedure is encouraged and acceptable by the stakeholders (Kilger et al., 2015).

            A vital aim of the tourism planning is to incorporate all the components of tourism into the communal and economic life of a society. The involvements of diverse stakeholders are also important for the tourism planning.

            In Vietnam, the management of tourism ranges from the national to the regional level. The tourism activities fall under the authority of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism at the national level. The National Administration of Tourism in Vietnam is held responsible for the state management of the procedures of tourism as well as their activities throughout the nation (Page, 2014).

At the national level, the National Administration of Tourism in Vietnam controls the planning for the development of tourism. The top-down nature of the tourism planning in Vietnam is clearly indicated by the administration structure of the tourism industry in Vietnam. The regional departments are crucial for the implementation of the tourism planning. However, the regional departments have little control in the nationwide master planning. The role that they play is to provide baseline information to National Administration of Tourism in Vietnam (Truong, 2015).

Challenges to Sustainable Tourism Development

A new law was initiated by Vietnam related to tourism in the year 2005. This law in turn leads to the planning and development of tourism and it leads to the regulation of the tourism enterprises. The tourism policies are mostly defined at the national level. Based on the National Administration of Tourism in Vietnam, the master plan for tourism, which was developed, included the following:

1. The focus should be given on the training of the human resources in order to meet the demands of the tourism development.
2. The tourism goods should be diversified and improved to meet the global market and produce more goods with historical features.
3. The tourism development will take place if the definite areas are protected.
4. In the country, the domestic and the foreign investment should be promoted.

The diagram below shows the tourism planning process that will lead to sustainable development.

In the tourism planning, education is the most important stage. It helps to make vital decisions and also helps in depicting the decision. The second step is the development of the objectives that includes the size as well as the character of the tourism industry. The objectives will help to provide a better knowledge of the sustainable tourism and environmental organization.  The survey should be conducted by collecting data and it should mainly of two types that are quantitative method as well as qualitative method. It will help in providing the strength and the weaknesses of the tourism industry (Smith, 2014).

The recommendation is required to assist the administration of the tourism sector as well as the policy-makers to design suitable tools that will persuade sustainable development. The strategy helps to encourage the development of tourism by minimizing the likely unfavorable impacts. The analysis should provide that the tourism should be gainful and it should also include the participants and the benefit of the domestic community. The implementation of the objectives of the sustainable tourism will in turn help the development of the tourism industry.

References

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Goodall, B., & Ashworth, G. (Eds.). (2013). Marketing in the Tourism Industry (RLE Tourism): The Promotion of Destination Regions. Routledge.

Hall, C. M. (2014). 6 Tourism planning and human security. Trust, Tourism Development and Planning, 47, 86.

Kilger, C., Reuter, B., & Stadtler, H. (2015). Collaborative planning. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 257-277). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Kusakabe, K. (2014). Advancing green growth in the tourism sector: The case of Hue, Vietnam. Energy (electricity and fuel), 17, 4.

Kusakabe, K., Shrestha, P., Kumar, S., & Nguyen, K. L. (2015). Pathways to sustainable urban tourism: Garden houses in Hue, Vietnam. International Journal of Sustainable Society, 7(3), 286-303.

Mason, P. (2015). Tourism impacts, planning and management. Routledge.

Mowforth, M., & Munt, I. (2015). Tourism and sustainability: Development, globalisation and new tourism in the third world. Routledge.

Murphy, P. E. (2013). Tourism: A Community Approach (RLE Tourism). Routledge.

Nguyen, H. M. T., Nguyen, H. C. D., & Nguyen, T. D. (2014). Research note: Empirical assessment of the tourism-led growth hypothesis–the case of Vietnam. Tourism Economics, 20(4), 885-892.

NiedzióÅ‚ka, I. (2014). Sustainable tourism development. Regional Formation and Development Studies, 8(3), 157-166.

Otto, J., Zerner, C., Robinson, J., Donovan, R., Lavelle, M., Villarreal, R., … & Pearl, M. (2013). Natural connections: perspectives in community-based conservation. Island Press.

Page, S. J. (2014). Tourism management. Routledge.

Smith, S. L. (2014). Tourism analysis: A handbook. Routledge.

Sustainable tourism on Senja – Mefjord Brygge. (2016). Mefjord Brygge. Retrieved 9 June 2016, from https://www.mefjordbrygge.no/about/sustainable-tourism-on-senja/

Truong, V. D. (2013). Tourism policy development in Vietnam: A pro-poor perspective. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events,5(1), 28-45.

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