ABSTRACT
Introduction Since the Renewal Process was introduced by the Vietnamese government (GOV) in 1986, tourism in Vietnam has developed relatively quickly and become an important economic sector (Truong 2013, 2014a; Truong et al. 2014). Indeed, the number of domestic tourists increased from 11.2 million in 2000 to 35 million in 2013, while that of foreign tourists rose from 2.2 million to 7.5 million in the same period (Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) 2009a, 2011, 2015). In terms of economic contribution, the tourism receipts generated totalled Vietnamese Dong (VND) 200 trillion (US$9.5 billion) in 2013, an 11-fold increase from VND17.4 trillion (US$809 million) in 2000 (VNAT 2009a, 2015). Vietnam’s Law on Tourism arms that tourism is a spearhead sector and an important contributor to poverty alleviation (GOV 2005). Given the economic signicance of tourism, the GOV has enacted a number of policies to promote tourism development (Truong 2013).
