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Korean travel
agencies scrutinized for unfair practices
The government
will keep a strict eye on Korean travel agencies
in an effort to catch illegal work practices, an
official from the Vietnam National
Administration of Tourism said.
Vu The Binh, head of
the administration's trav el
department, said Korean tourist numbers were
increasing and Koreans were destined to be the
country's most valuable tourism group.
“However, they often
visit Vietnam through unregistered Korean travel
agencies with guides that haven't yet been
licensed,” Binh told local travel agencies and
the Ho Chi Minh City authorities at a meeting in
the city last Friday.
The Koreans make up
the second biggest group of tourists, after the
Chinese, with 480,000 Koreans arriving in
Vietnam last year.
This marked an
increase of 12.7 percent on last year's figures,
meaning Koreans accounted for more than 11
percent of the country's total international
arrivals.
An official from the
HCMC Department of Tourism said many Korean tour
operators have organized city tours for
tourists.
The unregistered
operators illegally employ Korean or
international guides and earn profits in the
country without paying taxes, the department's
deputy director La Quoc Khanh said.
He added that this
also happens in other countries like Japan and
Spain where there is a shortage of tour guides.
Khanh said official
investigators discovered about seven or eight
illegal Korean travel operations last year.
Among them was one
company which had its four Korean tour guides
deported, he said.
Foreign tour guides
are not allowed to work legally in Vietnam.
Instead,
international travel operators are licensed to
set up joint ventures with local partners but
this will change under Vietnam's commitment to
the World Trade Organization as the industry
will be forced to open up to 100 percent foreign
investment after 2014.
Legalize
operations
Vo Anh Tai, director
of the Saigontourist Travel Service Company,
said it was hard for local businesses to make
inroads into the Korean travel market, mainly
due to the shortage of Korean-speaking
Vietnamese tour guides.
About 1,400 tour
guides are certified in HCMC out of the 5,000
tour guides nationwide.
Yet, only 14 of
those in HCMC are Korean speakers.
“Korean travel
operators close the market so tour operators in
other countries have difficulty getting in and
attracting Korean tourists,” Tai said, adding
Korean expatriates in Vietnam book hotels
themselves or order travel services for small
groups of tourists coming in from Korea.
Saigontourist Travel
Service Co., owned by giant Saigontourist
Holdings, is one of the country's very few local
businesses running tours for Korean people in
partnership with Korean tour operators.
However, compared to
the company's other international arrivals, the
tours bring in few Korean tourists.
Binh said the
government encourages international operators to
organize tours using the established legal
framework and warmly welcomes foreign tourists
to the country.
He said the
administration will lead an investigation of
unregistered Korean businesses in order to
penalize them and then legalize their operations
by making them use Vietnamese tour guides or
Korean interpreters.
Khanh said the
service is running a pilot project to train
Vietnamese-speaking Korean tour guides as
interpreters.
The first training
course was attended by 37 unlicensed Korean tour
guides who have since been reclassified as
interpreters and the second course, with the
same number of enrolments, will be held later
this month, he added.
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VIETNAM TOURISM FACTS
The
Vietnam National Administration of
Tourism says:
■ Vietnam attracted 4.2 million foreign
visitors in 2007, an increase of 17
percent on the previous year
■ The tourism industry aims to attract
five million foreign tourists this year
■ Vietnam is to host the ASEAN Tourism
Forum 2009, the region's biggest tourism
event, in Hanoi with a focus on tourism
cooperation |
Reported by Minh
Quang
- Source Thanhniennews[]com
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