The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) should be upgraded to an independent ministry of tourism to effectively bring greater success to the industry, experts suggested at a conference in Hanoi on Friday.

Currently, VNAT operates as a subordinate body of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, which is responsible for state administration on culture, family, sports and tourism affairs nationwide, in addition to the management of public services in those fields.

The ministry was founded in 2007 as the result of a merger of the VNAT, the country’s Committee of Physical Training and Sports, and the Culture section from the former Ministry of Culture and Information.

Taking into consideration the growing significance of tourism in Vietnam’s economy ten years on, experts once again proposed an addition to the country’s cabinet by the formation of a separate ministry of tourism dedicated to overseeing the booming industry.

Vietnam ranked 67 out of 136 world economies in terms of tourism competitiveness in the latest report issued in August by the World Economic Forum, a rise of eight places from a year earlier, Dr. Luong Hoai Nam, an economic analyst, pointed out at Friday’s conference on restructuring the country’s tourism industry.

However, there is still great room for improvement as Vietnam has yet to tap into the full potential of its highly ranked drivers of tourism such as natural resources (34^th), cultural resources (30^th), price competitiveness (35^th), and human resources and labor market (37^th), Nam said.

An unsightly construction site in Sa Pa, Lao Cai Province. Photo: Tuoi Tre

“With just over ten million international visitors in 2016, Vietnam was still far behind other destinations in the region like Thailand [32.6 million], Malaysia [26.8 million] and Singapore [16.4 million],” the former general director of budget carrier Jetstar Pacific said.

“Vietnam’s competitive edge in natural and human resources is restrained and even nullified by many bottlenecks.”

Nam therefore proposed the establishment of a ministry of tourism to unleash the country’s full potential for growth in the industry.

At provincial and municipal levels, many local governments where tourism is a major driver of the economy – such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang – have already established a department of tourism that operates independently from the Department of Culture and Sports.

This model needs to be scaled to a national level if Vietnam regards tourism as the spearhead for national growth and development, Nam said.

The opinion was echoed by other experts at Friday’s conference, including Nguyen Van Luu, a former VNAT official, and Nguyen Dinh Cung, president of the Central Institute for Economic Management.

The move, Cung said, would allow future proposals on improving Vietnamese tourism to be heard more easily by the central government.

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