That is a rather humorous but noteworthy viewpoint of MC, Master Trinh Le Anh - lecturer of Tourism and Events, Hanoi National University about the problems in building and managing public toilets.

Regarding the story of "already known, very miserable, talked about forever" about public toilets, a young Hanoian - MC Le Anh - expressed concern about the shortcomings in the construction and management of public toilets, the lack and uneven distribution of existing public toilets in Hanoi.

Master Le Anh on a trip to learn about the culture of African countries.

He started with a story in the tourism industry, a place in Hanoi that has been recognized as a world record and is known to many international friends, which is the Ceramic Road: "Currently, the Ceramic Road cannot be included in Hanoi's city tours as a tourist attraction for the simple reason that there is no place to stop and it is not convenient at all if tourists need to "go to the toilet" there."

Analyzing this issue, MC Le Anh said that when training in professional customer service in the tourism industry, a detail that is almost obvious to all tourism students is that every time a car arrives at a stop or a tourist destination, there must be a restroom for tourists to "relieve themselves" before or after the tour. On average, every 2-3 hours, a person needs to take a quick break outside of the vehicle and take care of "going to the restroom".

To meet that very humane need, the tourism industry has operated well by using a multi-service system at stopovers in the closed tourism circle. In developed countries such as China, Thailand and European countries, stopovers are professionally built to create comfort for tourists and local people when they need to use the toilet. However, in Vietnam, that phrase is still quite unfamiliar when most people and even managers do not fully understand the meaning of that phrase.

MC Le Anh analyzed: “Why not turn public restrooms into service stalls? And the people who currently sit by the door of public restrooms will become salespeople, guiding tourists? And any visitors who stop by will be able to use the restroom for free, and then they can buy something. That is stopover!”.

According to the reporter's observation, most of the public restrooms currently in operation have drink vendors, motorbike taxi drivers, etc. gathered nearby, which shows that there is a need to do business at public restrooms. However, these businesses are mostly small and spontaneous, making many tourists feel insecure when entering these public restrooms.

“With such a business need, why don’t we reorganize the model to become a civilized business location?” – Master Le Anh continued to ask questions about this situation.

In response to the Hanoi Department of Construction’s decision not to build new public restrooms in 2016, Master Le Anh affirmed: “This is an ill-considered decision for the people and for tourists!” This means that there will continue to be questions left by foreign tourists such as it is very difficult to find restrooms, having to pay to use the restroom, often being treated unsympathetically by restroom attendants… Clearly, this is a bad impression for the tourism industry as well as the image of Hanoi, Vietnam.

MC Le Anh also admitted that currently, urban infrastructure in Vietnam is not keeping up with the development of modern life, managers also have too much work to do, but perhaps, we should not ignore the small things that have a major impact on the bad habit of Vietnamese people: defecating in public places!

Having traveled a lot and explored many places in and outside the country, MC Le Anh humorously said: "Surely you or I have thought about removing the "subsidized" image for public toilets in Hanoi, to socialize or simply let the private sector participate in the "toilet business"!

Strange idea, good (!) but difficult to implement. Tourists only have a very small limit of needs related to this issue, they also proactively "solve" their personal needs without intentionally looking for the words "public toilet"! They will look around and proactively go to shopping centers, hotels, large restaurants or convenient stores/stores..."

According to this MC, let's turn existing public restrooms into multi-service and product stopovers by providing free "toilet" services based on the benefits from customers coming in and out of the stores at the stopover!

Once again, Master Trinh Le Anh affirmed that it is not only necessary to continue building new public restrooms, but also necessary to change, "put on a new coat for public restrooms" to turn those places - instead of the word Public Restroom on the signboard - into models of stopovers/tourist information centers...

In addition, local authorities and decentralized management forces must also intervene to monitor and even punish "public" places such as supermarkets, service counters, hotel lobbies or in the future, stopovers that show signs of refusing to provide free service to the hygiene needs of tourists and residents.

Small things, too much talk can easily become jokes: "In addition to the regulation of equipping fire extinguishers on cars, we also have to recommend (or even) require equipping tools to serve human hygiene needs..!".

According to Infonet