A top Vietnamese official said Vietnam is among the safest and most friendly destinations worldwide, needing only to improve the environment and advertising to awaken huge potential. 
Hoang Anh Tuan, director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism told Thanh Nien: “boasting 3,260 km of coastline and 125 beautiful beaches, Vietnam is like no other country”.

Developing marine tourism is among the major policies of the government which is hosting programs to promote the country’s tourism.

In addition to advertising, Vietnam also needs to pay more attention to the environment. He pointed to Thailand’s Phuket Island where the beaches are clean and wastewater is controlled.

But he said locals at Phu Quoc Island, a popular resort off southern Vietnam, often dump waste into the sea.

He suggested the government assess the environmental impact of projects prior to green lighting them.

“It’s better to lose several billion dong than cost the next generation hundreds of billions of dong,” he said.

Vietnam not only has huge marine tourism potential, especially along the central coast, which though poor, is on par with any nation in the region, it also has mountains, rivers, plains, highlands, and midlands with four distinct seasons, not to mention 7 UNESCO-listed world cultural heritages, he added.

Its culture is unique and diverse with 54 ethic groups living in harmony.

But only 3.6 million international tourists visited Vietnam last year, while the figure for Malaysia is 17.5 million, Thailand 13.5 million and Singapore 4.5 million.

Those countries surpass Vietnam primarily because they have better promotional campaigns, he said.

Anh said his agency will hammer out a concrete action plan to boost tourism in the country.

                                             Reported by Que Ha - Translated by A.N.O.N