In Vietnam there are about 3,000 craft villages, of which 400 are
traditional villages. However, craft village tourism is not really well
developed. The Vietnam Business Forum reports.
To date, Vietnam’s craft village tourism has attracted a considerable
number of visitors but that’s only spontaneous effort which is not
formed in a professional way.
Vietnam has about
3,000 craft villages, of which 400 are traditional villages that counts
53 occupational groups making about 200 kinds of different crafts. Many
of the villages have the history of hundreds of years, and that really
is “tourism resource mine”. The potential is huge but the number of
visitors coming to the villages is still limited despite the fact that
several enterprises have opened quite a lot of village programmes and
tours.
Luu Duy Dan, Chairman of the Vietnam’s
Craft Village Association, said that many localities have guidelines to
attach craft villages to the development of tourism. Craft villages also
have tourism development orientation, even appearing in the products of
travel agents, but there have been no positive changes.
He said that the villages are yet to have suitable conditions to
perform their craft skills; services for visitors are still poor;
community participation in tourism development is not high; and people
are not aware of the values tourism brings. Some villages have tourism
development orientation, but transport infrastructure is not favourable,
and the environment is not clean and activities are not well-organised.
A village is considered to have developing
tourism when its income from tourism accounts for at least 25 percent of
its total income. Pham Trung Luong from the Institute for Tourism
Development Research commented that the villages achieving that goal
have not yet appeared.
He pointed out a common
drawback of Vietnam’s craft villages is that despite they are large in
number and rich in forms of production, they are yet able to make
typical tourism products of Vietnam. If there is one, the product is
monotonous and not suitable for the needs of the market. Most Vietnamese
village artisans produce according to their own interest or in
stereotypes without creativity and learning about the tastes of
tourists. For example, in Hanoi, craft villages such as Bat Trang
pottery, Dong Ky wood, Van Ha wood, Ha Thai lacquer and Quat Dong
embroidery can be said to be “flourishing” thanks to exporting
handicrafts, but the service for tourists fails to enjoy due attention.
Therefore, Luong said that to develop craft
village tourism well, it is essential to have a shift in the perception
of the villagers. Instead of focusing on the luxury consumer market for
exports, the villages need to focus on popular souvenir market segment.
This market segment is very exciting and brings great revenues.
Orientations for promoting tourism villages is what branch and local
managers, particularly the Vietnam’s Craft Village Association has been
working on and looking for years. However, a recent workshop on this
issue did not achieve any significant progress. There have been no
breakthrough or creative solutions contributing to the craft village
tourism. It must have been a reason for that.
According to Prof. Phan Hong Ly, Director of the Institute of Cultural
Studies, to date, conferences discussing the development of village
tourism have been purely based on the subjective judgment of the State
agencies or professional studies. This sometimes makes loss of accuracy
from reality. The authorities should instead organise a number of
surveys on opinions of foreign visitors about tourism activities of the
villages so that they can know the true demands and complaints of
tourists.
Ly further said an important factor
to attract tourists to the village is environmental issue. Planning
should make clear the responsibility of the authorities, especially of
the central level, for creating and maintaining social and natural
environment suitable to attract tourists. To develop and promote craft
village tourism is difficult, to preserve identity and elite of the
villages as well as people’s living environment is even more difficult,
Ly stressed. If the village only focus on making profit from tourism and
economic activities and forgets those basic principles, they will lose
their largest part of the cultural heritage.
Craft village tourism development, if based solely on travel agents to
bring tourists, is unsustainable. Creative tourism trend is currently
very attractive in village tourism. Currently, tourists coming to
villages not only see but also show their desires to learn skills and
create products by themselves. To meet this demand, the villages must
have travel agents build products, keep houses with traditional and old
architecture and skilled artisans, collect well-known products, open
gallery exhibiting historical stuff on village development, and open
exhibition so guests can choose craft products of their own interests.
The strength to the above mentioned things lie nowhere else but in the
villages and their people.-VNA