Central travel hub greets first MICE tourists after social distancing

Friday, 10/12/2021 18:32
Da Nang city, a travel hub in central Vietnam, welcomed the first 500 MICE tourists on December 10 after a long social distancing period triggered by the COVID-19 resurgence, reported Vietnam News Agency.

The first MICE tourists are welcomed in Da Nang on December 10 (Photo: VNA)

This is also the first group of tourists coming to Da Nang after it reopened to travellers.

Nguyen Thi Hoai An, Director of the city’s Tourism Promotion Centre, said the visitors come to attend a national surgery and endoscopy conference, noting that the resumption of MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and events) tourism will help businesses and their clients be more confident in choosing Da Nang as the destination for their events.

The successful reception of this MICE tourist group will serve as an example of the safe and flexible adaptation to and effective control of COVID-19 for travel activities and event organisation at present, she added.

Jackie Han, Deputy General Director of the Hoa Binh Group - an organiser of the conference, said to ensure pandemic safety, said all the delegates to the event and the firm’s staff were required to be fully vaccinated, have safe travel history, move in different lanes, and practice the 5K principle (khau trang - wearing facemasks, khu khuan - disinfection, khoang cach - keeping physical distance, khai bao - making health declaration, khong tu tap - no gathering).

The national surgery and endoscopy conference takes place both in person and via videoconference on December 10 - 11, with more than 1,000 delegates, including about 500 participating in the event in Da Nang.

It is considered a positive sign for Da Nang’s travel sector and also the start of the MICE tourism season in late 2021 and early 2022.

Opportunities to export agricultural products to Singapore

Singapore is seeking more partner countries to cooperate in producing agricultural products and processed food while Vietnam has huge advantages in the field, said the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Introducing Vietnamese goods in Singapore. (Photo: hanoimoi.com.vn)

Singapore aims to produce her own food to reduce reliance on imports by 2030, while reducing its dependence on agricultural products from China and Malaysia. Aiming to achieve the target, Singapore needs to promote cooperation in food and food production.

Ms. Tran Thu Quynh, Vietnam Trade Counselor in Singapore, said that Singapore is very interested in the farming coordination ability to export agricultural products and food to this island nation. Therefore, Vietnamese firms see many opportunities to export to the market.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese products exported to Singapore are increasingly diverse in types and designs. At the recent exhibition “Vietnam National Brands Week 2021 – Hybrid Expo on Halal and Processed Food Products”, Vietnamese goods received many good reviews from importers about the quality of food products and price.

Vietnam and Singapore are the only two countries in ASEAN that have signed free trade agreements with the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom. In particular, according to the EU - Singapore Free Trade Agreement (EUSFTA), the EU side grants Singapore an export quota of 2,500 tons of food, while this figure for UKSFTA is 500 tons. So far, Singapore’s export volume to these markets has not met the above quotas.

Meanwhile, products made in Vietnam with Singapore’s trademark or products using raw materials from Vietnam manufactured for Singapore products are still eligible for tax exemption in the above markets. Therefore, Singaporean manufacturing enterprises pay much attention to the supply of Vietnamese goods, looking for partners to exploit the rules of origin, and the cumulative rules of origin of the agreements.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the import and export turnover of Vietnam and Singapore has grown continuously. While in 2016, Vietnam’s export turnover to Singapore reached 2.99 billion USD, in 2020, this figure increased to 4.01 billion USD.

Some 14,000 tour guides receive support due to COVID-19 difficulty

Since the beginning of the year, tourism management departments across the country have received more than 15,000 dossiers from tourism guides requesting support and have handled nearly 14,000 eligible applications with a total support of nearly VND 51.3 billion, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Photo for illustration. (Source: hanoimoi.com.vn)

In November 2021, the administration received 4,600 applications and completed procedures for 4,451 tour guides with an amount of more than 16.5 billion VND.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism has issued a number of documents urging localities to support tour guides affected by the COVID-19 epidemic according to the Prime Minister’s Decision 23/2021/QD-TTg dated July 7, 2021.

In addition, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism has built and maintained a column "Supporting policies" on the website https://vietnamtourism.gov.vn and regularly updates information on state policies and the results of supporting local tour guides.

In Hanoi, as of December 7, the Department of Tourism has received 3,983 dossiers requesting support, of which 3,184 qualified dossiers have been resolved, and 2,898 have received support.

Textile and garment exports to hit 39 billion USD

Photo for illustration. (Source: baodautu.vn)

Despite being heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the third quarter, Vietnam’s textile and garment exports have overcome difficulties and maintained strong momentum in 2021, said Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS) Truong Van Cam.

Accordingly, export turnover of textile and garment exports is expected to reach 39 billion USD this year, up 11.2% against 2020 and up 0.3% against 2019.

Cam stressed that this can be seen as a great effort of Vietnam's textile and garment industry in the context that the recovery speed of the world economy tends to slow down and is heavily affected by COVID-19.

In the face of unprecedented difficulties and challenges caused by the epidemic, VITAS has performed well its role of connecting domestic enterprises with each other and with foreign enterprises to form the supply chain and expand export markets.

Sharing about the prospects of the textile and garment industry in the coming year, the VITAS Vice President said that the positive signals will come from major markets such as the US and the European Union, as the markets have reopened while Vietnam has changed its policy from "zero COVID-19" to safe adaptation, flexibility and control.

Many enterprises in the industry have orders until the second quarter of 2022, he added.

VITAS has set a target for 2022 under 3 scenarios: striving to achieve 42.5-43.5 billion USD of export turnover for the most positive, if the epidemic situation is basically controlled in the first quarter of 2022; 40-41 billion USD for the average scenario, if the epidemic is under control in the middle of the year; and 38-39 billion USD for the lowest scenario, in case the epidemic is still complicated, lasting until the end of 2022.

Mui Ne listed among World’s Top 10 beaches for vacation

Mui Be Beach. (Photo: vietnamtourism.gov.vn)

Mui Ne is the only representative of Asia in the top 10 of the list of the 100 best beaches in the world selected by Bounce Luggage Storage Service Company.

According to Bounce, Mui Ne in Vietnam ranked at 9th place with 5.84 out of 10 score.

“Out of all the top 10 best beach vacation destinations, the only one with average hotel prices under 55 USD per night is Mui Ne. The exact price is 54.12 USD, and on top of being affordable, Mui Ne also has average temperatures of 26.5 degrees Celsius (79.7℉) and it has hundreds of restaurants to choose from,” said the website.

Bounce revealed that there were 36,700 #Mui Ne tags posted on Instagram.

Mui Ne enjoys a tropical climate all year round and has become a favorite tourist destination among Russian tourists in recent years, earning its nickname 'Little Moscow.'

Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) landed in first place with the highest score: 6.97 points thanks to the advantage of a beautiful 2.5-mile long sandy beach and especially the number of restaurants and bars.

The next positions belong to US beaches: Miami, Venice, South Beach and Santa Monica in California. Among them, Miami Beach is the most popular on Instagram with 14.4 million hashtags from travellers around the world.

To calculate which beaches in the world are the most popular vacation destinations, Bounce looked at factors such as the weather (temperature and rainfall), the warmth of the sea, hotel prices, number of restaurants, and the beach's social media value. These scores were calculated together to create a score out of ten, which gives the definitive ranking./.

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