Vietnam Business Forum held an interview with Mr Sekiguchi Ken, Deputy Director General of APEX tourist joint venture on the development of tourism in Vietnam.
How do you see the tourism potential in Vietnam?
Vietnam has great potential in tourism with unique cultural tradition and beautiful landscapes. In recent years, the number of tourists visiting Vietnam increased significantly, especially those from Japan. Currently, Japanese tourists make up the biggest proportion of foreign tourists in Vietnam. They come to Vietnam, as I said earlier, because of Vietnamese landscapes. Second, Japan and Vietnam have many similarities in culture. Third, Vietnam is a safe destination while many other countries could not have the same conditions. I believe Vietnam tourism can develop further the potentials and opportunities. The problem is how you do it.
And what do you think Vietnam should do in the coming years?
Five years ago, few Japanese knew Vietnam. Now they know more about Vietnam. For instance, they know Bat Trang ceramics and buy the products as souvenirs. The tourist product is quite successful. However, Vietnam should increase advertisement on tourist programmes and products. So far it is done only in some big cities and mainly in Tokyo.
How do you find the role of companies in tourist advertisement?
Many people think that the government must do the advertisement. I believe, it should be done by the whole community. To attract tourists, the service must be good, relics preserved, tours well designed and without price hike and hecklers.
Tourist companies play a very important role in the advertisement. They must improve products to attract tourists and make Vietnam impressive to tourists.
For APEX, we focus on advertisement of our tourist products increasing the image of Vietnam tourism. Together with SASCO, we are distributing free of charge Guide Book to Japanese tourists at Tan Son Hat airport so that they can get useful information about Vietnam.
And what are the difficulties in your activities?
From my long experience in Vietnam, the investment environment is now quite good with attractive policy, political and social stability, intelligent and skilled workforce and reasonable prices.
The difficulty is, however, in legal aspect. Vietnamese laws are unstable. Though each amendment brings an improvement, it affects the psychology of investors. Many laws could not be enforced due to the lack of guiding documents. Vietnam should do more to improve the laws. In Vietnam, many people are operating without licenses and copying illegally tourist progammes of other companies. It is a real difficulty for companies operating legally as APEX.
It is reported that APEX is trying to bring Vietnamese tourists to Japan?
It is true that we have such a plan but permission is not yet granted by related authorities. In fact, tourism between two countries is encouraged in all joint statements and programmes for trade and tourism promotion. According to the license of the joint venture, APEX can only bring Japanese tourists to Vietnam and not the other way round. As an investor operating legally in Vietnam, we want an equal treatment. Even with modest investment, we can create an important impact on socio-economic development in Vietnam: developing hotels, restaurants, fine art articles shops and employment.
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