Published:  09:26 Friday - January 04, 2013

The Vietnam Society of Travel Agents (VISTA) were forced to hire a Chinese film production company two years ago for VND1 billion (USD47,938) to produce a short film promoting Vietnamese tourism due to domestic failures.

Vu The Binh, Vice Chairman of the VISTA, said they were compelled look abroad after originally hiring a well-known Vietnamese film director who failed miserably at the task.

Binh said he was loath to mention the first attempt and so far had managed to protect the identity of the failed producer.

Backward thinking, bureaucratic procedures

Danang City at night

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) originally hired a famous domestic director to make a ten-minute video promoting Vietnamese tourism seven years ago. However, the final results were so substandard that it had to be scrapped.

“Tourist promotional videos should be made by people with fresh eyes and an idea of what makes a country interesting. When the video was slammed, some people involved in the production crew were a bit angry and couldn’t understand what the problem was,” Binh explained.

He condemned Vietnamese tourism promotional videos, saying they were substandard due to backward thinking and a lack of experience.

He admitted that professional looking short videos on Vietnam had been far more successful as they had succeeded in exploiting simple but typical and beautiful aspects of the country.

Despite now having modern film equipment, Vietnamese film makers are still completely incapable of matching foreign impressions of the country.

Binh and his colleagues have struggled with such a basic objective due to incompetent domestic film makers and obstacles to hire foreign producers.

“We recently hired a Chinese partner to make a short tourism video to broadcast in China. The outcome was perfect thanks to the help of Beijing Television, Binh revealed.

According to him, foreign film makers face a lot of difficulties in making short videos on Vietnam’s tourism, including bureaucratic and cumbersome procedures including bizarre need to have permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Public Security to receive approval for their projects, along with limited domestic funding.

Cliched South Korean travel firm video

No other choices

Nguyen Manh Cuong, Deputy Director of VNAT said the video made by the Chinese partner had helped significantly increase the number of Chinese tourists to Vietnam, from a previous 800,000 people to a current 1.4 million per year.

The video has also helped increase Chinese investment in Vietnam.

He noted that it the VNAT had splurged thousands of dollars on Vietnamese tourism promotional adverts on CNN.

 Source: Dtinews