Improving Tourism Products for Sustainable Economic
Development: A Case of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Huynh Tan Hoi
a
Department of Language, FPT University, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam
Keywords: Economy Development, Diversifying, Tourist Products, Tourism.
Abstract: As a large city with advantages in tourism infrastructure, Ho Chi Minh City is always considered the leading
tourist centre of the country. The most important task of city tourism today is to improve quality and diversify
products, making this industry one of the key economic sectors. Tourism potentials and advantages have not
been effectively exploited to become a unique and attractive tourism product of Ho Chi Minh City. Some
tourists seem to still only consider this as a stopover or transit point because there are large international and
domestic routes before reaching other destinations in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City tourism is gradually losing
this advantage when key tourist areas are completing international airports and convenient road transport
infrastructure. In addition, Ho Chi Minh City tourism has also developed over the past time, but there are not
many typical products. Therefore, before losing its advantages and its potential, Ho Chi Minh city should
focus on building a unique and diversified tourism product system to attract tourists. This paper analyses the
challenges that Ho Chi Minh City is facing and mention some recommendations. The results of the paper
through the analysis process show that the tourism industry of Ho Chi Minh City has advantages and
disadvantages that need to be overcome in order to build a more sustainable tourism brand.
1 INTRODUCTION
Being a modern city with strong growth in many
aspects as well as an important international trade
gateway of the region and the country, Ho Chi Minh
City is always a destination for many international
tourists to choose when coming to Vietnam.
However, in order to retain long-term tourists to learn
and discover the unique identities of local people in a
methodical and profound way, the tourism industry of
the city still has many things to do (Ryan, 2002).
According to statistics of the Ho Chi Minh City
Department of Tourism, in 2020, international
visitors to the city are 1,303,750 arrivals, down 84.8%
over the same period in 2019, reaching 14.49% of the
2020 plan. Domestic tourism to Ho Chi Minh City
was 15,879,000 arrivals, down 51.5% over the same
period in 2019, reaching 46.7% of the plan in 2020.
The total revenue of the tourism industry reached
84,512 billion VND (a decrease of 39, 6% over the
same period in 2019), reaching 57.4% of the plan for
2020. However, it is due to the Covid-19 epidemic,
the city has had a pretty good growth compared to
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3505-5290
compared with the years 2000, 2020 or past years
(Fan et al., 2019).
2 METHODOLOGY
The paper is based on sources and data gathered
during doing the research, then, the data were
analysed and compared. The article also analyses
survey results from 40 people who work in the
tourism industry. The survey was conducted to gather
their opinions as well as their proposed solutions. The
results of this survey are then used in research to
assess the importance of diversifying and improving
the quality of tourism products and services. For the
questionnaire samples, the random sampling method
was selected so that all participants were equally
likely to participate in the sample. At the same time,
to ensure sample reliability, the interview questions
were conducted in different locations and at different
times.
Huynh, T.
Improving Tourism Products for Sustainable Economic Development: A Case of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
DOI: 10.5220/0010591304010406
In Proceedings of the International Scientific and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure (ISSDRI 2021), pages 401-406
ISBN: 978-989-758-519-7
Copyright
c
2021 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
401
3 RESULTS
The first seven months of 2018, TP. Ho Chi Minh
City welcomes nearly 4.4 million international
tourists. Contributing to that result, the city tourism
industry has focused on researching and developing
different types of tourism products, associated with
history, culture and architecture in the area such as
shopping tourism, MICE tourism (conference
tourism), food, river travel, etc.
River tourism is considered a typical product of
the city. Ho Chi Minh City has not been properly
exploited with its available potential and
geographical advantages. The City Department of
Tourism has coordinated with the Department of
Transport to implement the program of developing
and improving waterway traffic, serving tourism
(Gia, 2021).
Through the survey, most say the destinations are
interesting (50%), but only 27.5% say "very
interesting". This implies that tourism products are
still not attractive enough for tourists. From the
perspective of an activist in the tourism industry, but
specifically tour guides, tourism products need to be
further improved so that visitors will come back and
experience them again and again. There are a few
"Rather Interesting" options (20%), which needs to be
rethought as the tourism product needs to be perfect
to attract tourists, especially the fastidious ones
(Figure 1).
Figure 1: Respondents' assessment of the attractiveness of
tourism products in Ho Chi Minh City.
Some of the respondents (30%) also mention the
option “more good products”, that is, the outstanding
product play a rather important role. Tourism
promotion and promotion activities are large,
invested in content, in-depth, specialized for each
market segment and bring high efficiency (27.5%).
Many activities to link domestic and foreign tourism
development cooperation have been effectively
implemented (Mai et al., 2019). The development of
new tourism products and forms and improving the
quality of tourism services that are interested in have
significantly contributed to attracting tourists,
creating many impressions of visitors when coming
to Ho Chi Minh City (Phuong and Khuong, 2017).
Figure 2: Solutions to develop tourism.
In the above factors, the tour guide is seen as an
ambassador. They are the ones who bring the image
of the country to international tourists. For that
reason, they also need to cultivate more professional
skills and knowledge (Figure 2).
4 DISCUSSION
4.1 Current Status of the Tourism
Industry of Ho Chi Minh City
Tourism activities in Ho Chi Minh City are quite
active. Here, there are 669 travel agencies, including
357 international travel agencies, 312 domestic travel
agencies and eight representative offices of foreign
travel agencies. Many businesses have strong
capabilities and have built reputable brands in the
country and in the world such as Saigon Tourist, Ben
Thanh Tourist, Hoa Binh Tourism, Vietravel,
Fiditourist, VYC, Vidotour, Apex, Exotossimo, YTC,
etc.
Facilities for tourists staying here are also very
rich. In the city, there are 1,527 tourist
accommodation establishments with 35,000 659
rooms of all kinds, including 860 one-star to five-star
hotels, with 25,000 737 rooms. There are 13 five-star
hotels, including New World, Sheraton, Park Hyatt,
Caravelle, Rex, Majestic, Movempik, Sofitel,
Legend, InterContinental, Renaissance, Equatorial,
Windsor Plaza; one six-star hotel. In the near future,
27,50%
50%
20%
2,50%
Very interesting
Intersting
Rather
interesting
Not interesting
30%
27,50%
25%
17,50%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
More good
products
Good tour
guides
Marketing
activities
More
invesment
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there will be other five-star hotel in this city. As a
result, every year, more than three million
international visitors come to the city, creating
favorable conditions for the industry to achieve
revenue of more than 40 trillion Vietnam dong
(VND) per year (Phuong and Khuong, 2017).
Figure 3: Flower Street Festival in Ho Chi Minh city.
In order to improve service quality, the city's
tourism industry has constantly invested in upgrading
and building many new hotels and restaurants. In
2010, Saigon Tourist, a private tourist company, put
into use quite new and modern hotels. Some other
hotels have been upgraded and expanded (Phuong &
Khuong, 2017). Although there are not many
monuments and landscapes in Ho Chi Minh City, the
tourism industry of the city has sought to exploit its
strengths in cultural activities such as festivals,
festivals, fairs, especially culinary culture and travel
events. Domestic and foreign tourists are quite
impressed with travel events such as Nguyen Hue
Flower Street, Tourism Festival, Southern Fruit
Festival, Southern Land Food Festival, etc. (Figure
3).
Figure 4: Jade Emperor Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh city.
The industry used to focuse on developing four
key tourism products. The first is the program "Ho
Chi Minh City - 100 interesting things", the focus is
on consulting experts and consultants to contribute to
the expansion of 20 criteria of the 2011 program
(Figure 4). The second product is a standard travel
service program aimed at building good shopping
spots to introduce to tourists. To date, the city has
more than 100 standard tourist service spots. The
third product is an art performance program for
tourists. Types such as circus, martial arts are
exploited, from historical events and from unique
cultural features of Vietnam. In addition, a number of
other art units also participate in performing to serve
tourists but have not been closely linked with the
Citytour programs of travel companies. The product
with the strongest growth potential and the most
promising results is the river cruise program (Tuan, &
Rajagopal, 2019).
4.2 Some Shortcomings of the Tourism
Industry in Ho Chi Minh City
The tourism environment of the city still has many
shortcomings, especially security issues for tourists.
Many street vendors, beggars, lottery ticket sellers,
shoe shineers, etc. They often disturb customers
without guarantee of quality, causing discomfort for
visitors. The most serious is the situation of robbery
of property, stealing money carried out by a number
of taxi, cyclo, and motorbike taxi. Therefore, the
tourism industry needs to closely coordinate the city
police, especially the special forces and other
functional departments and agencies to restore order
and safety in this field to build a city tourism
environment. safe, friendly and civilized.
In fact, every time there are visitors from other
regions or foreigners visiting, tourist companies
usually take them to traditional sightseeing places
such as Ben Thanh Market, War Remnants Museum,
Independence Palace, Dragon House Museum, Ho
Chi Minh City Post Office, Cu Chi Tunnels, etc. In
the minds of those who were born and raised in this
City, of course, these are places that have been
"assigned" as destinations-places tourist must visit.
Everyone can easily see the familiar destinations
mentioned above. Foreign visitors come to Ho Chi
Minh City to stay and it takes them just 1-2 days to be
able to explore all the sights in the city. The rest of
the time is spent on shopping, transfer and
accommodation to other provinces and cities
(Phuong, 2019).
Tourists often like to discover new places and new
things, however, in order to find a place to experience
Improving Tourism Products for Sustainable Economic Development: A Case of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
403
the extremely diverse and rich culture and arts of the
Vietnamese people in the City, it is still difficult. To
find a place for international tourists to experience the
culture. admire, admire is really not easy. This is a
void that city tourism has not fully exploited.
City tourism regulators also admitted that the city
still does not have a fixed, large-scale performing arts
venue (while most countries in the ASEAN region
have performance centers over 1,000 guests. ), and
there are no high-quality arts programs to serve the
entertainment needs of tourists during their stay in the
city (Truong, 2013).
The current entertainment activities are not
attractive or commercially exploited through the
forms of bars, beer clubs, karaoke, etc. and sometimes
there are changes; There is no entertainment product
suitable for a modern, dynamic and international city
(Ryan, 2002).
4.3 Promising Potentials
One of the current important tasks of the city tourism
industry is to focus on developing river tourism in the
direction of Can Gio, a coastal district with great
potential for ecotourism. Located 50 km from the city
center by bird-flying with an area of more than 70,000
400 hectares (one third of the whole city), Can Gio
has a coastline of more than 20 km and a mangrove
area of more than 37,160 hectares (accounting for
more than half of the total area of the district). With
about 12,000 hectares of natural forest and more than
20,000 hectares of planted forest, Can Gio mangrove
ecosystem has recovered and developed well,
recognized by UNESCO as the first " mangrove
biosphere reserve area " of Vietnam (Lai et al., 2009).
Figure 5: A boat trip along the river.
This is truly the "green lung" of the city, which is
especially important in regulating the climate.
Coming to Can Gio, visitors will have a feeling of
refreshment and relief when returning to nature
because surrounded by immense forests of all kinds
of trees, especially mangroves (Figure 5). The
mangrove fauna here is also of high value in terms of
biodiversity conservation with more than 200 species
of animals, including 24 species of reptile
amphibians, birds and other animals. In particular, the
Can Gio mangrove forest has up to 11 species of
reptiles on the red list of the country. Another
attractive feature of Can Gio is the intertwined river
and canal system (accounting for nearly one third of
the whole district's area), so sailing under the lush
green forests will create a distinctive feature of
regional tourism (Kuenzer and Tuan, 2013).
There is another interesting thing, that is, the
characteristic feature of Can Gio culture is the Nghinh
Ong festival (Whale welcome festival), which takes
place every year on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn
Festival, attracting many tourists to visit, play and
entertain. This festival is being researched and
upgraded to a city-scale cultural and tourist festival.
Can Gio also has three unique traditional craft
villages. These are concentrated forest villages in
Tam Thon Hiep and An Thoi Dong of Can Gio
district area.
However, in order to successfully implement the
river tourist route in the direction of Can Gio, there
are many things to do, especially building
infrastructure (Kuenzer and Tuan, 2013). The first
thing is to focus investment in the construction of key
projects to serve tourism, improve Can Gio marine
eco-tourism area, embellish Can Gio coastal urban
area (600 ha). In addition, the construction of bridges
to connect with the city center should also be focused.
In addition, it is also necessary to develop a network
of markets, supermarkets, trade centers, and business
establishments, food service, accommodation,
ecological garden model combined with tourism;
specialties serving tourists are also quite important.
5 SUGGESTIONS
From real requirements, a number of solutions to
develop tourism products to increase the
attractiveness and competitiveness of the tourism
sector are proposed, focusing on the development of
unique and multi diversify the product system,
improve the quality of tourism products and services,
develop human resources and promote promotion of
tourism products (Mai et al., 2019).
First, it is necessary to clearly define the specific
tourism products of the region to create highlights and
brands for city tourism (Phuong, 2019). With its
unique cultural values, Ho Chi Minh City should
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focus resources on the development of cultural
tourism products to become specific products, and at
the same time develop supplementary products to
increase the endowed with product systems (Tuan, &
Rajagopal, 2019).
Next, the development of tourism products
associated with the target tourist market should be
focused (Gia, 2021). Product development must be
appropriate to each target market, therefore, we need
to have effective market promotion strategies and
plans. The markets identified in Ho Chi Minh City are
international tourist markets (including international
tourists and overseas Vietnamese), domestic tourists
(Vietnamese and foreign tourists) in addition to live
in Vietnam).
In addition, it is necessary to develop a system of
tourism products with high integration, that is, we
need to link main tourism products with
complementary products to create synthetic products
that bring high added value. Some links can be
created such as culture - ecology - resort; ecology -
resort; culture -entertainment; resort - entertainment;
MICE - culture – entertainment,etc.
It is necessary to focus on investment and
development to build national tourist resorts and key
tourist spots in accordance with the proposed plan to
create a highlight product for city tourism (Fan et al.,
2019). Of course, we need to invest in the
development of the tourism infrastructure system,
which is essential to develop the accommodation
system suitable for each type of tourism product to
meet the diverse needs of tourists; that is, we need to
develop a system of standard restaurants serving
tourists, ensuring the diversity of cuisines and
emphasizing the culinary introduction of the city; to
develop a system of synchronous technical and
material foundations in service of tourists; to build
entertainment works, theaters, and convention and
exhibition centers of international and national scale
and stature. Transport systems need to be upgraded
and invested, the high-quality tourist transportation
system should be safe, environmentally friendly and
friendly with the disabled (Tuan, & Rajagopal, 2019).
In order to improve the quality of tourism
products, we should develop a set of standards for
assessing the quality of tourism products (regulations
for accommodation establishments, tourist
attractions, dining establishments, souvenir
establishments, tour operators, and transporting
tourists) and apply for the whole city (Truong, 2013).
The solution to promote the market, promote
tourism products also need to be focused (Gia, 2021).
We need to develop plans to promote and attract
international tourists in phases and suitable to each
key market; actively participate in international
tourism promotion activities; building tourist
information systems (websites, maps, guides, tourist
information counters, leaflets, etc.) convenient,
diversifying information, in major international
languages; build programs to promote Hanoi tourism
to international (advertise on foreign travel
magazine/TV channels, participate in major
international travel events, promote Ho Chi Minh
tourism in events) international events, etc.).
However, the domestic tourism market also needs to
be focused, from there, we need to build a suitable
tourism product that attracts domestic tourists and has
policies to stimulate demand for the domestic market
(Truong, 2013).
Last but not least, it is the solution to develop
tourism human resources. Tourism human resources
with high professional expertise and good
professional ethics need to be invested (Hoi, 2020).
To do this, we need to give priority to developing the
system of tourism vocational training schools in the
city; strengthen professional training programs,
tourism management skills, and disseminate the city's
sustainable tourism development policy to the staff of
the tourism industry. Local forces of tour guides need
more thorough training in both relevant skills and
knowledge (Gia, 2021).
6 CONCLUSION
In the context of the COVID-19 epidemic there are
still unpredictable developments in many parts of the
world, tourism - the general economy is certainly
facing many challenges. However, with efforts to find
opportunities right in difficulties, synchronously
implementing solutions to promote links, creating
highlights from each locality's advantages, enhancing
the application of information technology in
construction, promoting tourism products and
activities of Vietnam in general and Ho Chi Minh
City in particular will have more prospects.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
There is no conflict of interest in the paper.
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