Shaping Development Strategy for Khanh Hoa Tourism

When talking about Khanh Hoa, we cannot help mentioning Nha Trang – a coastal city well-known for long as one among the most beautiful bays in the world not only with blue sea, white sand and nice sun year-round but also with mild, good-hearted and hospitable people. The specific characteristic of Khanh Hoa tourism is sea and island travel. Beaches with tens of large and small islands are the beauty of Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa that nowhere in the world has.

Many years ago, building the trademark was mentioned in a bid to raise competitive advantage for the tourism sector. Therefore, Khanh Hoa Province has paid much attention to popularizing and promoting tourism as well as developing cultural tourism. A great deal of programmes, contents, and performance forms have supported much for the provincial tourism development plan. Many national and international festivals, culture-tourism events, fairs, conferences, seminars were organised in Nha Trang, including the Mid-term Conference among Counsellors Group of Sponsors for Viet Nam, the APEC Financial Professors’ Meeting, the Miss World Contest, and especially the Miss Universe 2008. The provincial tourism sector also organises regularly popularisation campaigns for tourism, as well as take part in exhibitions, seminars on introducing Khanh Hoa tourism in Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi, Da Nang, Hue, and some countries in the world, in an effort to popularise provincial tourism potentials and stimulus local and foreign travel demand. Recently, the provincial tourism sector has cooperated with the Viet Nam Airlines to lead hundreds of Japanese and Korean partners trading tourism Nha Trang to study market and tourism products of Khanh Hoa in particular and of Viet Nam in general. Thanks that, Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa tourism has been popularised nationwide and worldwide, step by step asserting the prestige of the trademark of Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa tourism. Over the past years, Nha Trang has become an attractive destination for tourists with no low-hour season.

 

Many enterprises operating in tourism started building their trademark due to direct impacts of the business development. And they succeed with their famous trademark home and abroad. The trademark of Ana Mandara of the Khanh Hoa Investment & Trade Company is a symbolic example. Ana Mandara has been a resort meeting international standards over the past years. Annual revenue of Ana Mandara is at over VND 100 billion, it contributes to the state budget over VND 10 billion. With the cooperation of the Six Senses in management, the Ana Mandara resort was awarded with prizes and selections from domestic and foreign well-known travel magazines in succession. The Khanh Hoa Investment & Trade Company plans to pour much investment in developing some reports trademarked of Ana Mandara including the Evason Ana Mandara Villas in Da Lat; Evason Hideaway at Ana Mandara at Ninh Van-Ninh Hoa and in Ha Noi, Dong Nai. Apart from Ana Mandara, Nha Trang also has many other famous trademarks such as Vinpearl, Yasaka-Saigon-Nha Trang, Long Phu, and Thap Ba hot spring tourism centre. These trademarks also succeed in attracting tourists and bringing high revenues and many prizes.

Despite of much effort, the trademark of Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa tourism is still similar to implicit slogan of the sector. The tourism sector admits that activities to popularise local tourism products to global market, especially developed countries are not professional and have not yet met the demand. Specifying clearly products to build their trademark is an urgent mission when the value of tourism of Viet Nam in general and Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa in particular is not high in the world. Ecotourism and sea and island travel are strong points of Khanh Hoa, however, it is difficult for tourists to remember them because specific value of these is not still clear, a representative for a tourism company in Khanh Hoa said. Popularisation programmes of tourism sectors still not specify clearly products and destinations are attributed to the above situation. On the other hand, the important thing is specifying clearly direct rivals. With favourable position and advantage, rivals in tourism of Nha Trang are Bali and Phuket, not domestic companies.

 

From that point, the sector will research and analyse suitable development strategies in a bid to seek big tourist sources, not snatch sources out of other localities in the country.

 

According to the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, in order to build effectively trademark of Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa tourism, tourism sector should ensure good preparation for the Sea Festival 2009 and the Miss World 2010 based on the successful foundation of cultural and sporting events over the past time. Accordingly, the province needs to give its priority to tourism popularisation activities so as to research psychology, predilection and consumption habit of tourists as a foundation for building suitable products and popularisation forms to each market. Khanh Hoa also should call for finance from organisations and enterprises. By actively taking part in fairs, exhibitions, festivals, and conferences home and abroad, the sector will seek not only partners but also new markets and tourist sources in the world. The sector proposed the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to help Khanh Hoa build a popularisation strategy or hire professional consultants for building popularisation strategies and holding events more professionally.