STUDY AND EXPLORE THE POTENTIAL AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTION OF TOURISM AS AN IMPORTANT ECONOMIC SECTOR IN VIETNAM

Nghiên cứu khám phá tiềm năng và định hướng phát triển du lịch để trở thành ngành kinh tế mũi nhọn ở Việt Nam STUDY AND EXPLORE THE POTENTIAL AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTION OF TOURISM AS AN IMPORTANT ECONOMIC SECTOR IN VIETNAM STUDY AND EXPLORE THE POTENTIAL AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTION OF TOURISM AS AN IMPORTANT ECONOMIC SECTOR IN VIETNAM

STUDY AND EXPLORE THE POTENTIAL AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTION OF TOURISM AS AN IMPORTANT ECONOMIC SECTOR IN VIETNAM ABSTRACT Vietnam's tourism industry is considered an important economic sector because of its geographical location with rich and diverse tourism potential The study was conducted to find solutions to improve the ability to exploit the potential of Vietnam's tourism industry to become a spearhead economic sector in the near future The study used both research methods including qualitative research method and quantitative research method By qualitative research method, the study has provided an overview of Vietnam's tourism industry including growth rate, the contribution of tourism to the national economy The research method is carried out through surveying 200 individuals currently working in the tourism industry in Vietnam about the factors affecting the ability to exploit the potential of tourism development in Vietnam The results of the regression analysis have shown that all four factors in the research model have a positive impact on Vietnam's ability to develop tourism in the following order:1) Destination's Supply and Consumption Capacity; (2) Place's Demand and Purchasing Power; (3) The Development Value of Destination Resource; (4) Destination's Tourism Industry Contribution.On the basis of the research results, some specific recommendations are proposed to improve the ability to exploit the potential of tourism to become a spearhead economic sector of Vietnam, which are presented in detail below CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rational for topic Tourism is one of the main pillars of international trade, plays an important role in the economies of many countries in the world, and is an important source of income for many developing countries (Costa, 2017; Mason, 2015), especially for countries with tourism development potential According to Turner and Freiermuth (2016), in the context of the modern economy, tourism has become one of the key economic sectors for sustainable development in developed and emerging economies, as it provides a wide range of cultural, social, technological, experiential and natural products for recreational and commercial activities The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC 2021) also pointed out that tourism plays an important role in creating employment opportunities, including direct, indirect and influence Reason; It is estimated that a quarter of the global employment opportunities are created, accounting for about 334 million, accounting for 10.6% of the total employment opportunities, accounting for 9.2 trillion US dollars and accounting for 10.4% of global GDP At the same time, international tourists' consumption accounts for 6.8% of total exports and 27.4% of total global service exports, contributing 1.7 trillion US dollars in 2019 Therefore, tourism is considered as an important part of international trade in services, and has become a prominent and burgeoning industry Compared with many countries in the region, Vietnam is one of the countries with great potential for tourism development, especially marine tourism and ecotourism Vietnam's tourism industry is considered an important economic sector because of its geographical location with rich and diverse tourism potential In 2019, Vietnam's tourism industry welcomed 18 million international tourists for the 1time, an increase of 16.2% over 2018 Between 2015 and 2019, the number of international tourists in Vietnam increased 2.3 times, from 7.9 million to 18 million, with an average growth rate of 22.7%/year Vietnam has been one of the fastest growing tourist countries in the world (ONS, 2019) In 2019, Vietnam Tourism Bureau won the "World Best Heritage Destination" awarded by the World Travel Award and the "World Best Golf Destination" awarded by the World Golf Award In addition, the World Travel Awards also rated Vietnam as the best destination in Asia in 2018-2019, However, Vietnam's tourism industry has certain limitations, such as: low return rate (10-40%); International tourists in Vietnam not spend much because of the lack of attractiveness and cohesion of Vietnamese tourism products, the lack of diversification of recreational activities, shopping and customer service, and the ineffective promotion This may be due to resource mechanisms, operational mechanisms, the absence of an overseas tourism promotion office, and the absence of operational and operational tourism development and support funds; Airport infrastructure approximates to be overloaded and cannot meet the high growth rate of tourist numbers; Entry visa policies remain limited compared to directly competitive destinations for Vietnamese tourism, such as Laos and Thailand For the above reasons, 1.2 Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is to understand the potential and current situation of tourism development in Vietnam On this basis, this paper puts forward the direction and solutions to improve the ability of Vietnam's tourism to develop into an important economic sector in Vietnam In order to achieve the overall goal, the specific objectives of this theme include: (1) inventory and evaluation of the conditions and potential of tourism development in Vietnam; (2) Analyze the current situation of tourism in Vietnam from 2016 to 2020 Using the theoretical and practical basis of tourism in the world and Vietnam, this paper provides appropriate directions and solutions for the goal of developing tourism as an important economic sector in Vietnam 1.3 Subjects and scope of study The subjects of this study is the natural tourism resources, cultural tourism resources and tourism activities in Vietnam The study was conducted within Viet Bam and collected travel data between 2016 and 2020 1.4 Research significance The main research result of this paper is to evaluate and analyze the potential of tourism in Vietnam, and then put forward that tourism should be developed into an important economic sector in Vietnam At the same time, this thesis is the result of interdisciplinary research, which makes use of the knowledge of many scientific disciplines: tourism, geography, history, economics and literature Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the tourism potential and current situation of cities is obtained, not only based on economic data, but also based on the analysis of human values and social changes, and the influence of natural changes on tourism activities CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Concept of Tourism Up to now, there is no common and unified definition of "tourism" (Buckley, 2012) According to Perles & Ivars (2018), tourism involves different themes, entities and directions, including many different economic, environmental and social activities The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) defines tourism as an activity in which individuals regularly travel outside the environment (their daily residence) for a period of no more than one year For one year in a row, the main purpose of their travel has nothing to with the money-making activities they go to (UNWTO, 2018) Tourism plays an important role in the global economy It creates economic benefits for local economies and energy for small and medium-sized enterprises, thereby creating millions of jobs It is also boosted economic development in developing countries (Robin, Pedroche, & Astorga, 2017; Boluk, Cavaliere, & Higgins-Desbioles, 2019; Batle, Orfila-Sintes, & Moon, 2018) However, the negative aspect of tourism lies in its negative impact on the environment, as it causes environmental damage, pollution, biodiversity loss and heritage degradation (Costa, Rodrigues, & Pacheco, 2020; Girard & Nocca 2017) The development and expansion of tourism has led to the extensive exploitation of resources such as water and energy and to the generation of large amounts of waste (solid waste and wastewater) that need to be properly managed The increase in travel also leads to more travel, resulting in road congestion, noise and air pollution, and therefore CO2 emissions Due to unsustainable economic and environmental imbalances, 2.2 The role of tourism in the national economy The first,Tourism economy contributes to increase national income through foreign currency collection, plays a great role in balancing the balance of international payments Tourism services have high export value and the highest socio-economic efficiency in service export activities, especially in terms of foreign currency revenue and labor attraction and job creation Import and export of services also have a great influence on the balance of payments of the entire economy SecondTourism economy contributes to attracting foreign investment capital, participating in expanding domestic and international markets The current trend of economic restructuring in the world shows that the value of the service industries increasingly accounts for a high proportion of the total social product Therefore, when businessmen look for the efficiency of capital, tourism is an attractive business compared to many other economic sectors The tourism economy offers a high rate of return, the investment capital in tourism is relatively small compared to the heavy industry and transportation industry, the ability to recover capital is fast, the technology is not complicated, the level of risk is low low risk In particular, through international and regional cooperation in the field of tourism, countries can take advantage to attract foreign investment capital Therefore, tourism economic development is considered an important channel in attracting foreign investment for socio-economic development of each country The development of tourism economy will lead to the development of other economic sectors because tourism products are interdisciplinary and have relationships with many fields in the economy Stemming from this demand of tourists, the tourism industry is constantly expanding its activities through inter-sectoral, inter-regional and transnational relationships Therefore, economic tourism participates in expanding domestic and international markets for each country Tuesday,tourism economy contributes to enhancing the exchange and integration of the country with the region and the world The interaction of factors such as: natural conditions, socio-psychology, living environment, tourists makes the tourism economy always have a constant development movement It is the thought of accepting the old, being confined in familiar motifs, and refusing to innovate that has created the failure of the tourism economy in some countries Since then, the requirement for tourism economic development is to expand links and cooperation between countries in the region and the world For local tourism product and service suppliers, it is necessary to expand relationships to learn and exchange experiences to create rich, diverse, and different products take advantage of comparative advantage For the residential community at the tourist destination, through the activities of the tourism economy, 2.3 Tourism Development Potential According to Elliot et al (2011), the concept of tourism development potential is understood as an assessment form to predict the sustainable development of tourism, which makes it easier for decision makers to make decisions related to tourism destinations (Andrades et al., 2017) Tourism potential of a region or a country has always been a topic of great concern and research by tourism researchers According to Crettaz (1976), the potential of tourism was initially considered as a factor in meeting the complex needs of tourists However, through the development and research process, by the 1990s, tourism potential has been widely applied in the economic and geographical fields, and fought a material and non-material aggregate with the ability to promote the capitalization of tourism and give full play to its functions (Corneliu, 2010; Glavan, 1996; Mamun et al., 2012) In addition, in the later period, the concept of tourism development potential was considered from other perspectives such as social and environmental factors of tourist destinations (Havlíková, 2019; Shohan et al., 2012) Then, most of the discussions about the concept and connotation of tourism development potential are based on sustainable development Ma Hedong (1997) thinks that the sustainable development potential of a region's tourism is the sum of the supply limit of regional environment, social and economic support and tourism resources in a certain period of time Yang (2006) proposed that the tourism development potential of a region or country is the ability to promote the sustainable development of tourism under the stimulation of some factors Wang (2008) emphasized the study of tourism development potential that tourism development potential is the space for sustainable development of tourism under the capacity of tourism resources, social economy and environment This is an important factor to measure the development of tourism in a region or a country, and it is also a comprehensive scale to measure the sustainable development prospect of regional tourism (Wang, 2008) Based on the multi-disciplinary perspectives of geography, economics and management, under the background of spatial scale and sustainable development of tourist destinations, this study holds that tourism development potential is the exchange and transformation ability of destination resources, society, economy and technology complex system, and is the driving force of sustainable development 2.4 Previous relevant studies Yuying Chen et al (2021) conducted a study to assess the tourism development potential of provinces along the Silk Road in China In this study, the authors emphasized that the assessment of tourism development potential is one of the important activities and plays a fundamental role in the implementation of basic sustainable tourism development plans and policies.The purpose of this study is to develop an effective multi-dimensional map to evaluate the tourism potential of destination areas along the Silk Road in China by building models Tourism potential index On the basis of literature review, this study develops four regular layers (tourism supply and consumption (X1), tourist demand and purchasing power (X2), destination resource development value (X3) and destination tourism contribution (X4) and 31 factors representing the four regular layers Then, all factor classes are assigned according to the statistical data provided by the local statistics bureau within the scope of the study in 2019 The data are analyzed by SPSS 24.0 The results show that the factors of tourism potential have different coefficients: y=0 2573x +0 1305 x +0 3177x3 +0 2945 x Xueyan Li, Xiaoxiao Zhan, Jinli Jiang (2021) carried out a comprehensive evaluation of silkworm tourism development ability in Anhui Province based on cluster analysis and factor analysis The study points out that the comprehensive evaluation of urban tourism development level in Anhui Province is of great significance to improve the urban tourism potential in Anhui Province This study constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system of tourism development level In the second step of the study, the researchers divided 16 cities in Anhui Province into four categories through cluster analysis, among which Hefei has the best tourism development Then, factor analysis is carried out to get the ranking of prefecture-level cities The top two cities in tourism development level are Hefei and Huangshan Finally, 2.5 Vietnam's Tourism Potential Analysis Framework 2.5.1 Research model of factors affecting the development of tourism potential in Vietnam Tourism development potential is the comprehensive development ability of a region or country to achieve sustainable tourism development (Melián-Gonzále et al., 2003), and tourism development potential is easily affected by both tourism demand and tourism supply In the research, the author inherits the research theoretical framework of Yuying Chen et al (2021) From there, a framework for analyzing Vietnam's tourism potential has been formed, as follows: Destination's Supply and Consumption Capacity Place's Demand and Purchasing Power The Development Value of Destination Resource Tourism Development Potential of Vietnam Destination's Tourism Industry Contribution Figure 1.1Analytical framework of research 2.5.2 Hypothesis development Destination's Supply and Consumption Capacity According to Yuying Chen et al (2021) Destination supply capacity is a set of factors including: number of tourism enterprises, total investment in the tourism industry of the country, number of tourism staff and capacity Meanwhile, the destination's consumption capacity is investment activities to upgrade traffic works, public sanitation facilities and activities to limit negative impacts from tourism development for example For example, the amount of carbon emissions released by the tourism industry and tourists to the environment, damage to vegetation, etc., besides that,