Diplomats asked to lend helping hand to local tourism
By Dao Loan - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC - The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) is calling on the country’s representative offices abroad to join forces in promoting Vietnam’s tourism and culture to travelers worldwide, said head of the national tourism authority.
Nguyen Van Tuan told the Daily on Monday that the agency this year would cooperate with certain representative 
offices to promote Vietnamese culture abroad. The agency expects its officials to be allowed to work in these offices as tourism promoters.
“We are focusing on major markets with Vietnamese culture centers, like France, which has the Vietnam-France Culture Center in Paris, so we think we can carry out the activity immediately there. Next destinations will include Japan, Cambodia and other countries,” Tuan said.
He said the agency was giving priority to deploy the new plan rather than the plan to establish representative offices of VNAT in foreign countries for tourism promotion because of a lack of promotion budget.
The high cost of running offices abroad is a reason the agency is thinking twice about the plan to establish such offices.
Normally, VNAT has around US$1 million for promotion activities at home and abroad. However, the agency in the last two years has had between US$2.2 and US$2.8 million because VNAT is receiving financial support from other sources.
For many years, tourism entrepreneurs and officials have been asking for setting up these representative offices in key source markets of the country’s tourism. The offices will not only carry out marketing activities to promote Vietnam’s tourism in important markets but also serve as bridges for local partners and foreign tourists.
Tuan said the agency would discuss a similar plan with Vietnam Airlines.
“Vietnam Airlines has offices in most source markets of the tourism sector so joint activities would bring benefits to both sides,” he said.
Vietnam’s tourism saw a decline of nearly 11% in international tourist arrivals last year with the financial crisis and the H1N1 swine flu cited as culprits. About 3.8 million foreigners visited the country in 2009, down by 450,000 from 2008.