VietNamNet Bridge – The National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has instructed travel firms to follow the nation’s laws and regulations strictly when they send Vietnamese tourists overseas.  The travel firms may not design tours that include visits to casinos.

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In the official letter to travel agencies, VNAT General Director Nguyen Van Tuan told them to avoid bringing Vietnamese tourists to unsafe places.  The firms were told to report to the authority immediately as soon as troubles occur.

VNAT also ordered province and city tourism departments to examine the outbound tourism operations of travel firms.

VNAT says that some travel firms have been found to provide substandard service when taking Vietnamese tourists abroad, and there have been incidents relating to tourists’ safety.

(In February 2010, a party of 22 Vietnamese tourists met an accident on the way from Pattaya to Bangkok which killed one and injured six.)

Responding to the VNAT directive, travel firms commented that tourists who want to will still find their way to casinos, whether or not gambling stops are programmed into a tour.  They always have free time in the evening to go whatever they want.

Nguyen Minh Quyen, Deputy Director of Ben Thanh Tourist, said that few travel firms include a casino visit in their tour programmes.  It is the tourists who decide whether to go to a casino or not, he added.

The head of a Hanoi travel firm agreed.  Despite the ban, he said, tourists will have no trouble finding a casino to gamble if they want. They can catch a taxi to one and pay all other expenses themselves, while no one can control their time.

However, Nguyen Minh Man, a senior executive at Vietravel, said that his company will work directly with foreign partners to remove casinos from tour destinations after studying the VNAT directive. Man said that Vietravel and its partners will identify alternative sites for Vietnamese tourists to visit.

Quyen of Ben Thanh Tourist said that he supports the decision by VNAT to discourage Vietnamese people from patronizing casinos during their trips abroad. “It is a kind of waste of foreign currencies,” he explained, “unreasonable when Vietnam every year has to spend billions dong to advertise Vietnam as a vacation destination.”

China last year issued a similar directive, forbidding travel agents from taking Chinese citizens to Vietnam to gamble. 

Analysts here comment that the ban on leading Vietnamese tourists to casinos is just a halfway measure.  They point to ads for trips to destinations like Las Vegas (US), Malaysia’s Genting Highlands and Macau on the websites of some big travel firms that include text that promises attractive nights at casinos.

For example, one ad notes the ‘chance to enter the night world of Las Vegas City’, or the ‘chance to discover the biggest casino in South East Asia’ or ‘seek good luck in casinos.’

The 24 hour casinos that have opened on the Cambodian border and in Phnom Penh and the big casinos in Malaysia and Macau have proven to be very seductive to Vietnamese tourists.

VietNamNet, TBKTSG