'Many localities do not understand much about tourism'

PV: 2019 is the third consecutive year that the performance of Nghe An Tourism industry has been voted into the top 10 figures, outstanding events in politics, economy and society of the province. What can you say about this issue?

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong: In 2019, Nghe An tourism activities continued to have many positive changes, tourist attractions in the province increasingly attracted more and more visitors. It is estimated that the whole year, the whole province welcomed about 6.5 million tourists, of which 4.7 million were overnight visitors, up 9.5%; international visitors were estimated at 145,000, up 12.6%; total tourism revenue was estimated at 8,800 billion VND, of which tourism service revenue was estimated at 4,580 billion VND, up 22% compared to 2018...

The results are clearly showing that in recent years, Nghe An tourism has been sustainably "bumper crop". Sustainable in that, despite certain difficulties in both weather and economic crisis between countries in the world affecting the development of tourism, Nghe An's tourism environment system is still stable to attract domestic and international tourists. Nghe An tourism is growing at a fairly safe rate with an annual increase of 10% in visitors and over 20% in revenue.

However, in the coming time, it will be quite difficult for Nghe An tourism to continue to maintain and promote high growth rate when Nghe An tourism products are not outstanding products to attract tourists. Therefore, Nghe An needs to pay attention to building a product system, meeting the requirements of tourists to have good "seasons".

Foreign tourists experience sunflower fields. Photo: Duy Son

PVAs you said, in the coming time, Nghe An tourism will have to face difficulties, challenges and the risk of falling behind in competition?

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong: Nghe An tourism potential is huge but the difficulties and challenges are not small. The first difficulty and challenge is that investment in tourism development is a world trend. Currently, many countries in the world have much better investment in tourism promotion than Vietnam. Similarly, provinces in the region also have much better investment than Nghe An, especially in the budget for propaganda and promotion activities. For example, Thanh Hoa province's budget for tourism is 35 billion VND/year; Ha Tinh province's is 15 billion VND/year... While the budget for tourism in Nghe An is 6 - 7 billion VND/year.

The second difficulty is that the character of Nghe An people is not a plus point in tourism development, in approaching domestic and international tourists. The third difficulty is that Nghe An has not attracted professional and strategic investors to invest in building Nghe An's own quality tourism products. If we look at other provinces in the region, we can see the limitations of the province's products.

The tourism results of the past 3 years are only a hinge to open a new chapter of development. For tourism to continue to have high growth, we need to pay attention to investing in tourism infrastructure, from port transportation, stations, accommodation systems, medical systems, warehouse systems to tourist service systems; we must improve human resources to meet the requirements of development. We also need to pay attention to strengthening state management of tourism. The tourism industry is in a hot development trend, if the state's policy mechanisms and legal guidelines are not strengthened and innovated, many complicated problems will arise.

And finally, we must truly reform the administration so that Nghe An becomes an open, spacious, beautiful, and legal environment; so that investors can invest in new, quality products, changing the current situation of Nghe An. According to the investment commitment, some tourist areas such as the Eco-tourism and Entertainment Resort Complex in Nghi Tien Commune of FLC Group should have started construction a long time ago, but until now it has not been implemented.

PV: Is the “slow” administrative reform a sign that some localities are still “passive” in tourism development? Besides the limitations you mentioned, is there another “bad” thing that tourism businesses in the province still take people from the province more than bringing visitors from other provinces to their locality?

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong: In fact, tourism is still a new industry. Currently, many localities also want to attract investors to develop tourism but do not understand much about the tourism industry. In Resolution 08 of the Politburo, the definition of tourism as a comprehensive economic sector, inter-sectoral, inter-regional, highly socialized and deeply cultural is to remind this.

Many localities often "say" that tourism is a key economic sector, but in reality, they still consider it a cultural sector more than an economic sector. Therefore, the appearance of "slowness" or "passivity" is also understandable... Obviously, we need to thoroughly grasp the spirit of Resolution 08 and renew our thinking to do tourism. Tourism is a comprehensive economic sector. When 1 million visitors come, we not only get 1 million for accommodation but also many millions more from food sales and transportation.

The story of travel agencies taking many tourists out and bringing few back is very common and easy to understand in tourism. The same goes for businesses in other provinces. From this, it is clear that we must actively promote, promote, and cooperate in tourism so that more people know about Nghe An.

In the past time, we have organized many cooperation and association programs to develop tourism with key tourist areas: Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Da Nang, Hue, Nha Trang, Lam Dong, Tay Nguyen, Mekong Delta provinces, North Central provinces and leading tourism businesses such as: Saigontourist, Vietravel, Hanoi UNESCO Club. This cooperation has produced good results, for example, with Hanoi UNESCO Club, each year still bringing over 1 million visitors to Cua Lo. Or after signing with Saigontourist, this business immediately organized a tourist group of over 2,000 people to Nghe An and in 2019 there were dozens of such groups.

PV: The New Year has come, Spring has come. This is also the season of spiritual tourism, many tourists will come to Nghe An on pilgrimage. As a tourism manager, what do you want to say to the industries or the localities that own the relics?

Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong: The rich cultural and religious treasures that create the character and identity of the Vietnamese people, regions have become attractive tourist destinations, mainly spiritual tourism. Nghe An currently owns 2,602 historical and cultural relics plus dozens of large and small folk festivals. This shows that spiritual tourism in our province has great potential. The problem that needs to be raised is how we must exploit it effectively, in accordance with regulations without losing its inherent good identity, because spirituality is always a very sensitive field and is often easily exploited for bad purposes.

In order for spiritual tourism to be effective, every year the tourism industry has sent documents to localities to strengthen state management of tourism with requirements to ensure the environment, security, order and safety for tourists when coming to Nghe An. Localities need to do well on these issues. When sectors see the negative aspects of tourism, especially spiritual tourism, they should stand up to solve the problem within their scope, give advice to localities to handle it, in order to build a better social environment so that tourists coming to Nghe An can see the spirit of hospitality, and come back many times after going... Localities that own relics should also invest in finding the good values ​​of the relics, do a good job of promoting and disseminating those values, and the relics will certainly become a destination in the spiritual tourism journey.

PV: Thank you!