Visa, the world’s leader in digital payments, announced on December 9 that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) to encourage more tourists to visit Vietnam and improve their experience within the country.
Vietnam is one of the top 10 fastest growing tourism markets in the world, earning VND637 trillion in gross revenue from the industry in 2018 alone.
Despite this, the industry faces some major challenges, such as underdeveloped infrastructure, staffing and skills issues and strong competition from neighbouring tourist destinations. While Vietnam has been rapidly expanding its acceptance of electronic payments, there are still many popular tourist establishments nationwide where travellers can only pay with cash.
In working together to promote Vietnam’s major tourist draws, such as its countless scenic locales, culinary experiences and historical and cultural sites, Visa will aim to attract more inbound tourists through incentives for cardholders, such as offers on accommodation, privileged access to events and special dining deals.
Visa will also seek to provide tourism operators with data on national and international tourism spending, helping these businesses make more informed decisions to increase their revenues from travellers.
According to research conducted by Visa, more than 280 million households will be travelling internationally by 2025 and some two out of five of these will be households from the Asia Pacific region. Many tourists have healthy travel budgets for their holidays but do not want to carry too much local currency.
Visa Country manager for Vietnam and Laos Dang Tuyet Dung said in a statement that Visa is happy to be working with TAB on this project to increase tourist arrivals in Vietnam and help bolster tourism revenues for the country.
By sharing insights on international visitor spending behaviors across their travel journey in Vietnam, Visa hopes to assist TAB in developing an even more targeted approach to growing the tourism industry.
“Optimising the communications network from Visa’s global footprint to increase tourists’ awareness of tourism services in Vietnam will help TAB become more proactive in capturing inbound tourism flows,” Dung said.
Tran Trong Kien, chair of TAB, stated, “We are very happy to work with Visa and be able to discuss their insights, computing power and international best practices. The MOU is a good start, and we look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship for sustainable tourism growth in Vietnam.”
