Many Vietnamese tour operators will experience hardship after Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) when wholly foreign-owned tourism companies are allowed to operate in the country, according to local newspaper Vietnam News Tuesday.

"Accession to the WTO means the door to the international market opens wider, and this will require all tour operators to improve their competitive edge," the paper quoted Nguyen Phu Duc, vice chairman of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, as saying.

He said many local inexperienced and new companies coming into the tourism market is a bigger problem than that caused by a lack of diverse products and information from the international market, and poor infrastructure development.

Tran The Dung, vice director of the The He Tre (Young Generation) Tourist Company, said foreign companies have formed strong global networking arrangements with hotels, airlines and tourist sites, enabling them to slash tour costs considerably.

Another local corporate official said, "Once having their own offices in Vietnam, foreign tour operators would be able to organize tours by themselves without the need to cooperate with Vietnamese partners as they are doing currently. The market share of foreign tourists for Vietnamese companies will see big declines. "

Another worry of local tour operators is that competitive advantages of foreign rivals include their price competitiveness of products and their retention of high caliber staff. Besides, many competent Vietnamese managers, executive officers and tour guides will be willing to work for foreign tourism firms due to high salary.

To cope with the situation, some Vietnamese enterprises will focus on attracting local tourists, cooperate with international tour operators in welcoming more foreign visitors, or open representative offices in some key markets in Europe, North America and Indochina.

Vietnam, which hosted nearly 3.5 million international arrivals and 16 million domestic visitors in 2005, hopes to welcome 5.5-6 million foreign visitors and 25-26 million domestic ones in 2010, and make total tourism revenues of 4-4.5 billion U.S. dollars, said the administration.

Vietnam received over 2.4 million foreign visitors in the first eight months of this year, a year-on-year rise of 4.8 percent. The country's biggest tourism markets in the period were China, South Korea, the United States and Japan, the administration said.

Source: Xinhua