94 5.2.4 Promoting tourism campaign in the global market
The interviewed companies deployed completely different advertising and marketing campaigns to promote Hanoi tours as the followings:
Vietnamtourism-Hanoi Join Stock Company promoted the development of international tourism by the ongoing deployment of diverse activities, specializing in promotion and branding Vietnamtourism-Hanoi JSC in particular and tourism in Vietnam in general toward international markets. Not only does it provide fascinating official webpage, but it also has vivid brochures, posters, CDs to attract customers. The company has many representative offices in different countries including Germany, United States. By being a member of many international travel organizations (e.g. Pacific Asia Travel Association- PATA, American Society of Travel Agents- ASTA, Japan Association of Travel Agents- JATA, and United States Tour Operators Association – USTOA), the company itself has broadened its brand name into the international market toward travel partners and foreign tourists. In addition, Vietnamtourism-Hanoi JSC has been participating in many local and international exhibitions, such as ITB Asia- the Trade Show for the Asian Travel Market in Singapore in 2012, World Travel Market in London and Vietnam International Travel Mart in Hanoi in 2013. The information of the company and its tour are also available in many international webpages including the Nibbler in Australia and the TripAdvisor.
In order to create highly competition and efficiently integrate with the development of international economic, Hanoitourist Travel Company has boosted its brand by advertising, marketing or introducing its products and services in various forms. The company utilizes mass media advertising, the electronic newspapers (e.g. newspaper, web development); trade fairs participation (e.g. in Europe, America, Australia, China, Thailand), farm trip participation, the annual market participation in Vietnam and abroad.
Vinatour Company deploys its own websites and brochure to advertise its products and services to international clients. This company has been so active in mass media advertising or exhibitions. Every year, Vinatour joins at least three international exhibitions including the International Tourism Bourse- ITB in Berlin, travel trade show in Thaland, travel trade show in Russia or Singapore. However, the Vinatour Company typically uses indirect distribution and
95 sales methods throughout its international travel partners namely Jet Tours- a tour operator in France, Sai travel agency in Japan, and so on. The company has two representative offices in Bangkok and Moscow.
As small enterprises, the International Travel Company and Smileviet Joint Stock Company are on a tight budget for sales and marketing campaigns. These company‟s marketing activities are based on its main webpage which is available in different languages (e.g. English, Chinese).
There is an annual farm trip cooperated with other international partners to examine a new tour or services in Vietnam or abroad. It is obviously a chance for these agencies to strengthen their relationship with other companions as well as to learn new or fruitful knowledge of their current offerings to apply back to the companies‟ products and services. In Smileviet JSC, the marketing campaign also appears on the official websites of its foreign partner. When customers log on those websites, they can easily see and click on the logo of Smileviet in order to find more information about travelling to Vietnam. Unlike Smileviet JSC, the International Travel Company has made the company‟s souvenirs for its customers, such as postcard, CDs, books. By taking the souvenirs to home and sharing trip memories to friends and family members, customers indirectly become good marketers for the company.
In other words, Destination Asia Vietnam does not have its own marketing or advertising plan because it is completely depending on its mother company, Destination Asia group. The group is already an establishment as leading destination management for Asia‟s travel connoisseurs so it has many international travels partners. All advertisements of Destination Asia Vietnam are available in the official webpage of Destination Asia group. Adding to this, most of the customers are upper class so they often contact and book tour to Vietnam from other operating offices of Destination Asia which then transfer to Destination Asia Vietnam.
Hanoikids as a voluntary club, it has no budget for advertising and marketing campaigns.
Actually, the club is well-known by a web-based service, TripAdvisor, which awarded it for a certification of excellence. Most of the TripAdvisor's online reviews have ranked it as the excellent way to discover Hanoi. From TripAdvisor‟s, customer may address to the official website of Hanoikids or its Facebook where they can get all the detailed information of booking a city tour.
96 5.2.5 Numbers of foreign tourists
Figure 26: The number of foreign tourists using Hanoi tour package at seven tour operators According to the chart, Destination Asia Vietnam hosts the highest number of tourist (40.000) whereas International Travel Company has the lowest number of tourists (900). Corresponding to their small-size company, Hanoikids and Smileviet JSC also have relatively small number of visitors, 1.800 and 2.500 respectively.
Among top 4 companies in the chart, Vinatour Company and Hanoitourist travel Company have a roughly equal number of customers (15.000- 17.000) while we witness a drastic increase to 30.000 visitors registering via Vietnamtourism-Hanoi JSC.
There is a coherent and obvious correlation between the Vietnam-based tourists and strategic campaign of each company. We could see the intensive investment in marketing and communication of Destination Asia Vietnam in the past couple of years has yielded significant return on investment. In contrast, the presence of such new tourism companies as International
Numbers 900 1800 2500 15000 17000 30000 40000
0