Some shop owners in Vietnam have surreptitiously accepted online payment applications that have not been permitted in Vietnam such as Wechat to trade with foreigners, especially Chinese tourists.
Answering questions from Sai Gon Giai Phong Newspaper on the responsibility of Vietnam Agency of Tourism, its General Director Nguyen Van Tuan said that they have held a forum on this issue and the State Bank of Vietnam has also proposed the Prime Minister to intensify the inspection and the handling of violations; keep closer eye on tourist operators and ask them to lead visitors to high reliability shops... In addition, the ministry suggested the need for experimenting some organizations to use their payment cards and intermediary payment in Vietnam as a pilot cooperation with foreign units.
Mentioning on cheap tourist services, he said that the issue of Chinese tourists, cheap tours and the responsibility of tour operators is a complicated and much-talked-about story.
China is an important market, Chinese visitors spend much and no country in the world develops tourism without attracting Chinese guests, he said.
However the increase of the number of tourists must be associated with the management and promote positive aspects, minimize the negative side, he added.
“The agency in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has submitted proposals to the Prime Minister, because these issues need the cooperation of many sectors, many units such as market management, taxation”
“In my opinion, there are knots to deal with that are blocking the metamorphosis in the closed store system, selling only to the Chinese, revealing negatives that are not controlled like selling counterfeit goods or selling with high prices, tax evasion, payments out of Vietnam’s banking system”.
“In fact, the Chinese tourists also complain that when shopping in the stores in Vietnam, they are cheated by the sellers for sale of products of unknown origin, Vietnam label of but made in China goods… In many respects, the role of all level of authorities is crucial”.
Local authorities, tourism inspectors need more strict solutions to handle violations of Vietnamese tourist firms in cooperation with Chinese counterparts to illegally use Chinese travel guides. To clear those two bottlenecks of the problem we need the joint action of tourism industry, the Ministry of Public Security and other government agencies such as the State owned banks, he said.
