Top 10 largest companies in Vietnam’s tourism industry were selected by VietnamCredit based on their size, business performance in 2018, 2017 and 2016 and objective assessment by credit rating experts of VietnamCredit.
Vietnam has been going through a boom in tourism over the past decade, becoming one of the top emerging destinations in Southeast Asia. The country has succeeded in leveraging regional and global tourism exchanges to capture market share from competitors in Southeast Asia, achieving record growth in both international and domestic arrivals. The number of foreign visitors coming to Vietnam each year is over 15 million, compared with only 4 million in the previous decade. In addition, the number of domestic tourists is about 80 million per year, which has quadrupled in the past 10 years.
Visitor spending leads to increased employment and income for businesses and workers in the tourism industry in Vietnam. By 2017, the tourism industry had directly contributed 8% to Vietnam's GDP (not to mention the additional contribution due to the indirect spillover effect). By employing many young and low-skilled workers in rural areas, the tourism industry also has a strong pervasive impact on poverty reduction in Vietnam. At the same time, the sector can also facilitate the redistribution of income from rich regions to poor ones. Therefore, maintaining the growth of this industry is considered as a strategic priority and an important factor contributing to the socio-economic development of Vietnam.
Compared to other developing countries in Southeast Asia, the great increase in international tourist arrivals in Vietnam has created conditions for the country to gradually dominate the market share of tourism demand in the region. Over the past 5 years and 10 years, the growth of international arrivals to Vietnam has been consistently higher than that of competitors in other regional countries.
Since 2017, Vietnam has experienced the strongest overall improvement in competitiveness compared to its regional peers, with leaps and bounds in criteria such as ICT readiness, international openness, security and safety, port and ground infrastructure.
Besides the above achievements, there are still weaknesses in Vietnam’s tourism industry. It still lags behind other countries in the region in terms of tourism services and aviation infrastructure, as well as priority to the tourism industry. Despite claims of strategic importance, the coverage and completeness of Vietnam's tourism industry statistics is limited. In terms of international openness, Vietnam's visa regime, despite having been more open in recent years, still lags behind major competitors in the region.
Among countries with high number of tourists to Vietnam, Korea and China top the list. The percentage of total arrivals from China and Korea increased sharply from 31% in 2012 to 55% in 2018. Although this helps increase the total number of international arrivals, visitors from these two markets tend to stay shorter than those from Europe and the US. Moreover, Chinese tourists spend relatively little. Thus, the above change reduces the total economic profit made by international visitors, which is evidenced by the fact that the average daily expenditure of tourists has not increased substantially and that the average length of stay for a traveler is reduced from 11.1 days in 2013 to 10.2 days in 2017.
According to the Government’s development plan for the tourism industry, in 2020, Vietnam will welcome 17-20 million international visitors, and 32-35 million domestic tourists. Direct income from tourism activities is projected to reach USD 10-11 billion. Three million jobs in the industry are expected to be created, of which 870,000 are direct jobs. The Government also wants to develop Vietnam’s tourism industry in a sustainable way by improving quality.
Vietnam tourism is very rich and diverse, and the country is an ideal destination for tourists. Compared to the tourism situation in 2018, the year 2019 has seen many positive changes. However, for many reasons, the tourism industry has not been fully exploited, so it is necessary to have a more effective direction to make Vietnam’s tourism known and popular to international visitors.
Source: WB, VietnamCredit
