Developing the Travel and Tourism Industry

 

Vietnamese people are always proud of the country’s tourism potential. The problem is how to effectively exploit that potential. In my opinion, Vietnam’s tourism sector faces three big challenges. The first obstacle is infrastructure, which is worrying authorities. Some issues have been solved, but in general there is no match between demand and supply. We think that the difficult issue cannot be solved overnight, but requires time and great effort. Human resources are the second challenge, enterprises in the tourism sector face a serious shortage of capable labour. Thirdly, Vietnam has no effective way to popularise the country’s tourism image. These three problems need to be addressed with comprehensive strategies. However, I think Vietnam’s tourism sector will develop strongly.

 

 

We have been cooperating with airlines to enhance Vietnam’s tourism image. In terms of infrastructure, there is no way but to wait for authorities and other related bodies, not only the tourism sector. In terms of human resources, we have had a training office to train the company’s staff for past five years. In 2006 alone, TransViet carried out 47 training courses with 20 subjects. Moreover, on behalf of Amadeus, we have trained more than 500 representative officials of travel agencies to skilfully use the Amadeus system. We have also teamed up with Vietnam Airline Institute to form training courses to provide qualified human resource for tourism and travel agencies. The courses focus on three main viewpoints: firstly, teaching all necessary skills for officials at specific positions, including nine subjects not only about airline professional knowledge and travel but also relation with customers, makeup, and use of office equipment. The second point is applying Amadeus’s advanced technology and localised standard syllabus from training documents of British Airways and United Airlines. The third is learning combined with practice, for example the course spends more than half of time on practice. We set a target that all learners will be equipped with sufficient knowledge and the necessary skills for their positions after three months of training.

 

 

The efforts of that past ten years have put us in a position to reach today’s target. In the airline sector, we have established relations with foreign airlines and built prestige for ourselves. Presently, we are the representative for 11 big airlines, both in goods and passenger transport, such as All Nippon Airways, Air China, British Airway, Emirates, Garuda, Korean Air Mandarin Airlines, Shanghai Airlines and United Airlines. Foreign airlines are very demanding and careful in choosing their representatives. Our professionalism and creativeness are the basis for one third of international airlines in Vietnam to choosing TransViet. When appointing our company as their representative, foreign airlines have considerably reduced operation cost in the market and taken advantage of the strength of local companies operating in modern business models.

 

In terms of the tourism sector, we have Outbound and Inbound. As for Inbound, we previously focused on Asian markets, but are now expanding to European markets and America. As regards Outbound, we have introduced real images of foreign markets to Vietnamese tourists, especially favoured destinations such as China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

 

TransViet acts as the representative of the world’s biggest global distribution system (GDS), Amadeus, in Vietnam. So far, we have installed Amadeus equipment in more than 500 agencies in Vietnam. Via the system, customers can book air tickets, tours, hotels and local transport. We plan to introduce the system to travel agencies and even customers who can use it to book seats, and manage their trips.

 

In the coming time, we will complete teaching programmes and research new professions to use university syllabus. We will still maintain relations with the foreign airlines for whom we act as representative in Vietnam. We are always ready to meet their requirements, and cooperate with other airlines if they want to appoint us representative.