Saigontourist successfully navigates bumpy road to take award at Vietnam Value Programme

Saigontourist has been a major tourism company in the past 45 years

The company has arrived before 875 companies to be listed in the top 124 Vietnam Value Programme businesses in 2020 scored by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and local authorities.

According to Nguyen Huu Y Yen, general director at Saigontourist, over the past 45 years, the company has maintained its place as a leading tourism establishment, contributing to the blooming of the local tourism scene.

In 2019, Saigontourist served 1.4 million local and overseas arrivals with the earnings of more than VND5 trillion ($217.4 million) and the annual growth rate of 11 per cent. With this, the company exceeded its business plan for the year and laid great hopes in a breakthrough this year but failed due to COVID-19.

At the beginning of the year, Saigontourist was confident that the pandemic would be controlled by April, just in time for summer – a perfect time to gear up for the peak season for tourism. However, the contagion kept growing, halting all overseas arrivals.

Facing the difficulties, the local tourism firm has decided to shift focus to the domestic market, with its resulting revenue performance surpassing its expectations. Sales in July were half as much as the year prior, and performance dropped to zero right after the health crisis broke out again.

With the added trouble from the floods in Central Vietnam, Saigontourist was once again forced to adjust its business plan. The tourist attraction activities in the area, which is responsible for 30 per cent of the company's revenue, were shifted to the southern and northern regions.

The biggest problem was steering through constant changes, demanding constant steering. Travellers returned in the last weeks of September, but there is a long road to full recovery for the industry and Saigontourist. November and December have been harder because these months are part of the low season for tourism. Foreign tourism has remained steeped in difficulties as the government has yet to reopen the borders as the pandemic is still raging globally. Consequently, the company has drawn up strategies for the next 1-2 years.

After 45 years of operation, Saigontourist has built a strong brand with a large workforce and 18 branches across the country. Moreover, the company has accelerated online and offline operations with diverse products to create a solid foundation to reach out to the global market. In the long-term, the firm is also thinking about opening branches overseas.

Being recognised as a Vietnam Value Award 2020 has given a great deal of motivation for Saigontourist to keep bringing the best value with its tourism services to customers, partners, communities, and staff members.

Saigontourist successfully navigates bumpy road to take award at Vietnam Value Programme (source:baodautu.vn)

This is the first time the Vietnam Value Programme has been implemented according to Decision No.30/2019/QD-TTg dated October 8, 2019 on promulgating regulations on building, managing, and implementing the Vietnam National Brand Programme.

Mr. Vu Ba Phu, General Director of Trade Promotion Department, Ministry of Industry and Trade, said that after 17 years of implementing the program of voting national brands of seven brands, we have witnessed the continuous growth of many domestic enterprises.

At the first selection in 2008, we saw only 30 selected companies with their products. By 2018, this had grown to 97, and this year we have registered 124 businesses and their brands.

However, the growth of the business community is not only in the number of enterprises participating, but also in exports, sales, contributions to the state budget, as well as their efforts in social responsibility. and job creation.

For example, the national brand recognized enterprise in 2018 achieved revenue of about 907 trillion VND (39.4 billion USD), export turnover reached 130 trillion VND (5.6 billion USD), contributing 85 trillion VND (3.7 billion USD) to the state budget and created 340,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, this year, those figures have increased to 975 trillion dong (42.4 billion USD) and 123 trillion dong (5.34 billion USD) by 2020, with the amount contributed to the bank. State books amounted to 179 trillion VND (8.5 billion USD) and 350,000 new jobs were created - all despite the pandemic.

Vu Ba Phu also said that, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has supported businesses in difficulty. After the first months of the health crisis, the domestic market was redefined.

Right from the beginning of the year, following the direction of the Government, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has worked with ministries, branches and localities to implement supply-demand activities across the country to remove difficulties for businesses in production. and distribution.

In addition, to support businesses with high quality brands, we have also been integrating selected brands into national promotions such as the Clean Food Program to vote Vietnamese products for local people.

The integration of such programs has helped grow the domestic market since the beginning of the year, despite the economic consequences of the pandemic. This shows that the communication, promotion and support efforts of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and its agencies so far have been effective.