VeiTravel, AST Travel showcase Vietnam potential to GCC agents
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The travel industry was presented with a new and unique offering of Vietnam as a potential destination for the next year. The country with an abundance of tourist offerings, shopping and luxurious hotels received the much needed support from Al Shafaq Tourism LLC (AST Travel) in Dubai.
To bridge the gap between Vietnam and UAE, VeiTravel, a government-owned company were brought in to present the key facets of Vietnam to agents in UAE. As Mario Anthony, director, Al Shafaq Tourism LLC said: “We conducted a one-day event in Dubai to showcase to key travel agents the tourism offerings for Vietnam. The event provided a platform for discussion in terms of any perceptions agents had on the destination.”
Currently, numbers to the UAE are minimal and this needs a boost. “We started with 100 inbound tourists coming in from Vie Travel into Dubai and this number has grown to 3,000 tourist currently. The focus is to look at the outbound segment as an important step, working as a mediator between local travel agents and VeiTravel,” added Anthony.
Vie Travel with a staff of 850, head quartered in Ho Chi Min city, coupled with international and local branches is well-geared to cater to agents needs from the UAE. Hai Phan Ho, inbound director of VeiTravel talking to Travel Daily Middle East said: “We have an added advantage of own coach as well as a car rental centre. In the high season, we can control the price and quality. These factors benefit agents. We are also the only company to have a tour desk at the airport. This assists in meet and greet of passengers at the airport.”
Having explained the benefits, Phan Ho further explains, with our partnership with AST Travel, for the first year of operation in the new season in 2014, we would like to target around 1,000 passengers from the region. The plan to make up these numbers includes familiarisation trips, participation at the Arabian Travel Market as well as product road shows in 2014.
“We would also look at conducting our own road shows in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for top 10 agents to increase awareness. The road shows will be conducted around ATM next year and many more around the year. We are looking to target travellers with short break options. We want them to opt for Vietnam over the regular Thailand and Malaysia, which are well-travelled destination. There is everything the GCC traveller is looking for shopping, luxury destination and Indian and Lebanese cuisine among others,” said Phan Ho.
With a well-structure plan in place, Phan Ho rounds up his trip saying, Vietnam is easy to access. As a company, VeiTravel assists in faster procurement of authorization letters from the immigration office which would normally takes five working days. These factors all build up to making a travellers’ journey to the destination smooth.
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