Legal synchronisation can unlock agro-tourism potential

Farmstays are accommodations for visitors who want to experience the daily work of a farmer, enjoy a quiet space, and even work on the farm itself.

During a farmstay, tourists can help breed cattle and poultry, deal with rice, and plant fruit trees or green vegetables, among other things. The products harvested can be used as cooking ingredients at the resort. Farmstay owners can earn money through the accommodation and agricultural experience services, as well as selling its products.

Nguyen Dao Dung - Deputy director, Travel Department Vietnam National Administration of Tourism

Vietnam has abundant agricultural and rural resources without much investment – agricultural land accounts for nearly 85 per cent of the country, spreading across localities and regions, and diverse conditions. There are a lot of intangible cultural values such as festivals, folk performing arts, traditional crafts, and ethnic communities.

In order to preserve and promote traditional cultural values and ecological environment, farmstays should pay attention to some orientations. First is focusing on developing tourism in areas with favourable conditions, exploiting the outstanding strengths of every rural area, and giving priority to synchronous rural tourist attractions and good infrastructure in connection with tourist routes nearby, and with tourist centres.

Second is developing rural tourism services with high quality, creativity, cultural differences, and ecological landscapes based on the advantages of each locality, suitable to the needs of the market – like rural resorts, healthcare, diversity of experiences, and new product lines. We should enhance the quality of the rural tourism workforce, service skills, and governance, as well as apply digital transformation.

The third aspect is delivering rural tourism products in association with target markets, including the domestic tourist market. Some of these developers are maintaining a high number of visitors and good revenue. Targeting to increase spending and prolonging the stay of tourists in rural areas is another good idea, aiming at the high-spending market. We should exploit the tourism value chain on the basis of linking with related industries and services of rural areas to provide diverse experiences to visitors.

Pham Thanh Tung - Deputy head Institute for Agriculture and Tourism

The trend of developing green, environmentally friendly tourism and experiencing indigenous culture is increasingly interesting in. Travellers like families and small groups want to enhance new experiences and look for new tourist destinations that are accessible and safe. These criteria are completely suitable for rural tourism destinations, close to nature and indigenous cultural values.

Promoting agricultural and rural tourism will enable agricultural products and rural cultural identity to become resources. Tourism development needs cultural identity, and agriculture is an economic sector with identity. The countryside is a place to fully preserve spiritual life, national culture, and core spiritual values. Meanwhile, other types of tourism such as beach resorts are being modularised, without uniqueness. Five-star hotels in Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, and South Korea are not much different if under the same developer.

Becoming a farmstay or agro-tourism country, Vietnam can lead the world’s tourism trend, provide new and different tourism products to increase competitiveness and diversify tourism products, and promote the development of related industries such as transportation, consumption, and education. We will also get many agricultural benefits, such as conservation and development of natural ecosystems, local export of agricultural products at high prices, and development of Vietnam’s agricultural brands. There are also environmental benefits like raising people’s awareness about clean agriculture, protecting the environment, and increasing revenue from selling environmental certificates.

Nguyen Ngoc Bich - CEO, Rustic Hospitality Group

Farmstays in Vietnam are currently being developed by two target groups. Firstly, the people with large-scale farms make their own farmstays. These are built spontaneously with no specific standards and the owners do not understand much about tourism, so it is easy to encounter problems with planning, operating permits, and project operation ability.

The second group consists of investors with capital and related experience. These investors may face a number of problems with the procedure of applying for a permit to convert from agricultural land to commercial-service land, or applying for a farm permit, but in fact, they are in the real estate business.

Unfortunately, Vietnam does not have specific and uniform standards for this model. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the tourism industry need to have a meeting to build a standard farmstay model with specified criteria for area, size of accommodation, experience activities, and search for more sets of criteria that have been recognised by prestigious organisations around the world to be able to assess the quality of the farmstay’s activities.

A separate working group on the development of the farmstay model should also be established to be able to provide timely assessments or advice.

Vietnam can learn from Taiwan or Indonesia on how to build farmstays methodically and professionally. They have specific standards for scale and services including land area, products, experience value chains, processing and production areas, and additional educational programmes on agriculture – as well as the ways to provide great customer services to maximise the effectiveness of the farmstay model.