Research on state management for community-based tourism development in some Northwestern provinces of Vietnam - Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Thực phẩm Tp. Hồ Chí Minh

This study focuses on assessing the role and responsibility of state man- agement for CBT development, analyz- ing the successes and limitations as well as proposing solutions to impro[r]

RESEARCH ON STATE MANAGEMENT

FOR COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN SOME NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES OF VIETNAM

Tran Thu Phuong*

Date received the article: 3/4/2020 Date received the review results: 5/10/2020

Date published the article: 27/10/2020

Abstract: Community based tourism (CBT) development is a topic that is currently of in-terest to many researchers and managers In Vietnam, CBT was developed many years ago and has been increasingly encouraged to develop In that context, the study of state management for community-based tourism development, especially at the provincial level, has a very im-portant signifi cance Although there have been some domestic and foreign studies on this topic, however, so far, there has been no comprehensive study on state management activities for CBT development in the North-western region The objective of the paper is to propose a number of solutions to improve the state management of CBT development in some Northwestern provinc-es on the basis of analyzing the current state of CBT development management Proposed solu-tions are related to reforming the formulation of strategies, planning, CBT development plans; perfecting policies, regulations related to CBT development, and strengthening the inspection, examination of CBT development activities.

Keywords: State management, community-based tourism, Northwestern provinces

* Faculty of Tourism, Hanoi Open University

1 Introduction

The Northwestern region in this study includes provinces of Lai Chau, Dien Bien, Son La and Hoa Binh The re-gion has a natural area of 3,741.6 km2, accounting for 11.3% of the national area The population in 2019 was 2,701,402 peo-ple, accounting for 2.8% of the country’s population According to “Master plan on Vietnam’s tourism development to 2020, a vision to 2030”, the Northwest belongs to the Northern midland and mountainous

tourist area This is an important strategic area with great potential and advantages for socio-economic development, nation-al defense and security of the North and the whole country Northwest is also the convergence of many unique tourism po-tentials with typical characteristics of the country and people of Vietnam This is an important feature attracting tourists, espe-cially international ones

tourism activities generally and commu-nity-based tourism (CBT) particularly in the Northwest have seen much pros-perity, refl ected in the growth of tourism development index, tourism products and tourism infrastructure It can be affi rmed that CBT development in the Northwest recently has had many positive impacts, contributing to the economy of the local people

However, apart from the above achievements, CBT development in the Northwest has also revealed some lim-itations, such as: little conservation and promotion of indigenous cultural values together with exploitation for tourism activities Many Northwestern products CBT products are so similar with few highlights to express the unique identi-ty of the local communiidenti-ty, making them less attractive to tourists CBT sites have relatively similar operating mod-els, developed on the basis of replication of previous pilot ones The inheritance and lessons learned from the previous models help them develop more, how-ever, many places are still stereotyped, not paying enough attention to working on surveys and assessing the current status of local tourism potential In ad-dition, the environmental conditions in many CBT sites are not good enough to receive tourists, especially those from developed countries

The cause of the above-mentioned limitations can be both objective and subjective The former may include: poor accessibility to tourist destina-tions, lack of supportive policies from the State This has been also shown in many domestic and international studies

for the Northwest and areas with sim-ilar conditions [10-14] The latter may include: lack of strategic development for the whole region, inadequate aware-ness of CBT leading to incorrect policy planning Other reasons have also been identifi ed such as: lack of researches to discover the typical ethnic cultural iden-tity of the locality to build CBT prod-ucts, poor tourism resource protection - an important factor for building tourism products, imbalance in the development of economy and tourism, no adequate support from the State in propaganda, promotion and training human resources in CBT activities, etc

In general, most of the above rea-sons are closely related to the role of state management on CBT in the region Up to now, although there have been many studies related to CBT development in Northwest [1, 2, 8], there have not been any studies nationally or internationally about state management on CBT in the region This study focuses on assessing the role and responsibility of state man-agement for CBT development, analyz-ing the successes and limitations as well as proposing solutions to improve the state management for CBT development in some Northwestern provinces (Hoa Binh, Son La, and Dien Bien)

2 Theoretical background, data and research methodology

* Theoretical background:

exploited by the community, and bringing them benefi ts (Tourism Law 2017)

Many studies on CBT have shown that CBT sustainable development re-quires the participation of all stakehold-ers, in which the state plays an important role The State is the main subject in the process of planning and implementing strategies, plans, policies and laws on tourism development in general and CBT development in particular

In this study, the state manage-ment for CBT developmanage-ment is regarded as the process in which the state uses its management tools to infl uence CBT development to achieve the tourism de-velopment goals State management for CBT development includes: Developing and implementing strategies, planning, making plans for CBT development; Issuing and implementing policies on CBT development; Developing CBT hu-man resource; State hu-management units for CBT, etc

* Data and research methodology Data sources for this research in-clude secondary data and primary one The former includes documents, reports, proposals, projects, statistics, etc relat-ed to CBT development in tourism state management agencies at state and provin-cial level

The latter was collected through the surveys conducted with CBT experts, lo-cal communities and tourists, including: current traffi c infrastructure, tourism re-sources tourism human rere-sources, tour-ism promotion, tourtour-ism environment, local support policies for those involved in CBT development, specifi c and overall

assessment of state management activities on CBT development

The questionnaires used were de-signed in printed forms and online ones The survey started from March 2020, and by the end of July 2020, 450 responses had been collected from tourists, of which 400 responses from Hoa Binh, 288 from Son La and 207 from Dien Bien (each guest could make multiple selections) At that time, Vietnam did not welcome any international visitors due to Covid-19, so all respondents were domestic tourists By the end of July 2020, 115 responses had been collected from experts, 120 from local communities (50 in Hoa Binh, 50 in Son La and 20 in Dien Bien)

3 State management activities for CBT development in some Northwest-ern provinces

3.1 An overview of CBT develop-ment in some Northwestern provinces

With the advantage of natural con-ditions and diversifi ed customs of ethnic groups, CBT is paid much attention to fur-ther develop in Northwestern provinces As of 2019, the total number of CBT sites in Hoa Binh, Son La and Dien Bien was 42 (Hoa Binh: 22, Son La: 10 and Dien Bien: 10); the total number of households par-ticipating in CBT activities was 290 (Hoa Binh: 174, Son La: 63 and Dien Bien: 53) Some typical sites are Giang Mo, Van village, Lac village, Tong village, Ai lage (Hoa Binh), Hua Tat village, Bo vil-lage, Hum vilvil-lage, Ngoc Chien (Son La), Noong Bua, Co Mỵ, Ten, Uva, Pe Luong, Phieng Lơi, Him Lam (Dien Bien)

Accordingly, it brings income for the com-munity and contributes to the growth of the locality’s total tourism revenue Ac-cording to reports from localities, the total revenue from CBT of Hoa Binh in 2019 was 415 billion VND (accounting for 20% of the province’s total tourism revenue) with an average increase of about 30%/ year from 2015 to 2019 In other locali-ties, there was also an increase in visitors, revenue and employees related to CBT (see table 1)

I n general, the Northwest has been exploiting its strengths to develop CBT The number of visitors to CBT villages gradually increases CBT has contributed

to hunger eradication and poverty reduc-tion, creating new livelihoods for upland people However, besides these achieve-ments, the development of CBT has also revealed certain limitations, related to the quality of tourism products, environ-mental sanitation in CBT sites, human resources quality, etc The survey shows that the importance of natural environ-mental factors (wastewater, waste, etc.) is assessed at 4.2/5, while the real value is assessed at about 3.5/5 in provinces; The knowledge and skills of people participat-ing in tourism activities are underestimat-ed (Hoa Binh: 3.44/5, Son La: 3.3/5 and Dien Bien: 3.1/5)

Table 1- Number of visitors and revenue from CBT in some Northwestern provinces, 2015-2019

With the above limitations, in gen-eral, the satisfaction of tourists in prov-inces is not high (Hoa Binh: 3.72/5; Son La: 3.69/5 and Dien Bien: 3.56/5)

The positive aspects, limitations and unsustainable images of CBT develop-ment develop-mentioned above are to some extent the results of state management for CBT development, which are specifi cally con-sidered in the following part

3.2 Analysis of state management for CBT development in some North-western provinces of Vietnam

- Developing and implementing plans, and planning related CBT in the provinces

In Northwestern provinces, things related to CBT development are often in-corporated in the local tourism develop-ment planning Up to now, all provinces of Hoa Binh, Son La and Dien Bien have had master plans for tourism develop-ment These plans play important roles in orienting tourism development in locali-ties [3-6]

In 2014, Hoa Binh had “Master plan for tourism development in Hoa Binh province for the period of 2014-2020, with a vision to 2030” The plan was ap-proved according to Decision No 2060/ QD-UBND dated 11 December 2014 One of the tourism development perspectives given in the plan is to focus on developing cultural tourism, eff ectively exploiting the values of cultural heritages and cultural identities of ethnic groups, particularly Muong to improve the specifi city and orig-inality of tourism products This is consid-ered as one of the important orientations for CBT development in Hoa Binh The

content for CBT development is shown in the plan, such as: Preserving the hamlets and villages with unique cultural identi-ties of ethnic groups in Hoa Binh province to develop tourism products; Selecting suitable hamlets and villages to receive tourists, generating stable income for lo-cal people

On the basis of the approved plans, Hoa Binh has developed and implemented specifi c plans Up to now, 100% of dis-tricts and cities have approved and im-plemented the local tourism development project to 2020, with a vision to 2030 The plan of developing Mai Chau national tourist destination in year 2030 was ap-proved according to Decision No 1728 / QD-UBND dated July 4, 2016)

In 2008, Dien Bien had a Master plan for tourism development in Dien Bien province until 2020 (Decision No 150/ QD-UBND dated January 30, 2008) For more than 10 years, there has not been any modifi cations or new master plans The limitation in this plan is excluding specifi c contents or goals for CBT devel-opment However, to orient the province’s tourism development, Dien Bien issued the resolution and tourism development program to 2020, vision to 2030 Those documents mention CBT development, such as proposing mechanisms to support and encourage CBT; building high quality cultural villages to welcome tourists Since 2015, Dien Bien has received 13 projects for tourism development in general and CBT in particular with a total capital of 71 billion VND, of which about 40 billion VND is for infrastructure investment

Master plans and tourism devel-opment plans in localities show the

ac-tiveness of the local government in state management Planning is an eff ective management tool in managing, investing and controlling tourism development ac-tivities However, generally the content of tourism planning has not focused on spec-ifying objectives and orientation for CBT development to promote the advantages of each locality The classifi cation among strategies - planning-plans has not been clearly stated leading to overlapping im-plementation or incompatibility, especial-ly in the fi eld of tourism investment

For experts, regarding developing and implementing projects and plans re-lated to CBT development in localities (Figure 1), it shows that the highest scores fall to A, B, D in Hoa Binh, which are not at a good level Besides, all related content in Hoa Binh receive higher points than the localities

Figure - Building and implementing projects and plans related to CBT development in some Northwestern provinces

- Implementing CBT development policies

In order to promote CBT develop-ment, Northwestern provinces have actively issued policies, which are present in resolu-tions Accordingly, apart from indirect poli-cies related to assisting tourism development including CBT (infrastructure, promotion, etc.) The resolutions emphasize legal sup-port for CBT development to improve the living standard of ethnic minorities in the provinces

Concreting the resolutions, CBT development policies in Son La province were issued under resolution No 22/2016/ NQ-HDND dated December 14, 2016 of the Provincial People’s Committee to fund CBT villages and households As of De-cember 2019, Son La had assisted CBT villages and 23 CBT households This ex-hibits the province’s eff orts towards CBT development However, after years of de-ployment, the disbursement was only 600 million VND, equal to 10% of local peo-ple’s needs The number of supported vil-lages and households is limited, account-ing for about 25% of those oriented to CBT development in the planning According to Son La Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism [7], the main reason comes from low and insuffi cient support, which is hard for the locals to implement the prescribed items, making it less attractive to the locals The disbursement procedure is so compli-cated, and time - consuming, making it hard for villages and households to access loans

In Dien Bien, CBT development policy was given in the Decision No 1128/QD-UBND dated 20 September 2010 on approval of the proposal

“Build-ing the ethnic cultural village to develop Dien Bien tourism” in 2015 Accordingly, 10 villages are invested, and villages are upgraded to welcome tourists The invest-ment aims at building capability to receive tourists The total investment is 11 billion VND, among which 415 million VND is for tourism products promotion After the implementation period (2010-2015), those policies have generally helped de-velop CBT and thereby improve local people’s living standards, contributing to the preservation of ethnic cultural values The proposal “Preserving and developing the culture of ethnic minorities in Dien Bien associated with socio-economic de-velopment from 2016 to 2020, orientated to 2025” provides support in conserva-tion for 03 - 05 tradiconserva-tional ethnic cultural tourism villages However, due to the lack of resources, many villages have no lon-ger received tourists with degradation of equipment, infrastructure while the reve-nue from tourism is not enough to make it up

Hoa Binh has not issued any specif-ic polspecif-icies directly related to CBT devel-opment However, support has been done regularly (for musical performance teams and CBT households) This support has made it easier for CBT households to con-serve, and promote the value of Muong culture and develop CBT