In interviews with Hanoimoi Newspaper, Vietnamese experts and businesses offered recommendations for improving the country's travel competitiveness  index.

Leveraging the country's inherent strengths while addressing emerging gaps will be crucial to boosting its global competitiveness in the coming years, the local insiders said.

The Hanoi Opera House has been rated as one of the most beautiful buildings in Southeast Asia.  Photo: Ngoc Tu

Truong Sy Vinh, Deputy Director of the Institute for Tourism Development Research (the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism): Leverage Vietnam's key strengths.

The ranks of Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have been significantly altered by the World Economic Forum's updated methodology for its 2024 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. This new approach highlights areas where the region's tourism sectors are underperforming.

There have been some shifts in the ranking of countries in the region as the new assessment provides a more comprehensive and nuanced view of travel competitiveness.

To increase competitiveness, the tourism industry must continue to maintain and build on its key strengths, including price competitiveness, natural resources, cultural resources, and safety and security. Results in these areas would improve the ranking.

Despite its wealth of cultural resources, Vietnam's tourism offerings are seen as limited and undifferentiated, prompting calls for the country to develop more unique, high-quality products tailored to its diverse regions.

Several key tourism metrics, including air transport infrastructure and sustainability of tourism demand, have seen significant declines in recent rankings, highlighting the industry's ongoing struggles.

Improving air transportation infrastructure is not an easy task, and without the coordinated efforts of all stakeholders, increasing the capacity and quality of passenger transportation will remain a significant challenge.

In the quest for more sustainable tourism, the sector must take steps to develop more attractive offerings for visitors, strengthen value-added services to extend stays and use modern technology to alleviate overcrowding in top destinations.

Trinh Le Anh, Head of the Event Management Department of the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University, Hanoi): adapting to new global assessment methods

Vietnam's tourism industry has made impressive achievements in recent years, with remarkable growth in international and domestic visitor numbers, rapid recovery and expansion of many tourist sites and destinations, and accolades from international tourism organizations.

Significant domestic and foreign investment continues to flow into Vietnam's tourism, hotel, and infrastructure projects, creating employment opportunities and driving local economic development. The tourism sector's strong recovery is a testament to its immense growth potential.

Vietnam needs to take a serious look at improving its competitiveness indicators and act fast to adopt new evaluation and measurement methods to identify lingering problems and make improvements.

The country also needs to invest more in infrastructure, strengthen environmental management, and enhance service quality. We should also put more emphasis on training high-quality human resources and developing effective promotion strategies.

Tran Thi Thu Hao, lecturer at the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Economics - Technology for Industries: ranking results do not accurately reflect Vietnam's tourism situation

Since the Vietnamese Government fully reopened tourism activities on March 15, 2022, the industry has experienced an impressive growth spurt in 2022-2023.

Recent data paint an encouraging picture of the industry's recovery. In the first six months of 2024, Vietnam welcomed an estimated 8.8 million international visitor arrivals - a 58.4% increase over the same period in 2023 and 4.1% higher than pre-pandemic levels in the same period in 2019. Domestic tourist visits are also estimated to have reached 66.5 million during this period.

Given this growth rate, I believe the tourism industry has a solid foundation to achieve its 2024 targets.

Objectively speaking, the three-place drop in Vietnam's Tourism Competitiveness Index in 2024 can be attributed to the World Economic Forum's use of data from the 2020-2022 period, when tourism activities were almost frozen due to the severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.