According to the assessment of the Institute of Economy and Aquatic Project, untreated wastes more and more discharge into the river and sea valleys. These bring about pollution of sea environment which have influenced the development of tourism sector.
It is estimated that by 2020 amount of waste will increase quickly inshore areas with total nitrogen 26-52 tons/day, total ammonia 15-30 tons/day. This does not mention the impact of waste pollution from enterprises such as Vedan that currently makes tourists in Vung Tau be uncertain to choose seafood.
Air pollution is also a warning for tourism authorities because this is the risk reducing number of “fastidious” foreign tourists from Europe, US and Japan. Project of “Survey, statistic and evaluation of the effects of environmental pollution on community’s health” which had been implemented by the Department of Environment Protection in two provinces Phu Tho and Nam Dinh estimated the consequences in terms of economic damage since the impact of air pollution on health on the average per capita each year was VND 295,000 (price in 2007), about 5.5% GDP per capita. Supposing that economic damage because of air pollution impacting on health of people in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city was similar to the residents in Phu Tho and Nam Dinh provinces, it was estimated that Hanoi (excluding the expanded areas) estimates VND 2,58 billion and Ho Chi Minh city (excluding the immigrants) VND 4,93 billion in loss everyday. In fact, air environment in big cities such Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh city, Hai Phong, Da Nang is polluted much more than Phu Tho, Nam Dinh provinces; therefore, economic damage due to the real air pollution in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city would be greater than the above figures. This is obviously make tourist dares not stay for long time in places where having polluted atmosphere like this.
Environment pollution in general and air pollution in particular have been becoming one of factors influencing tourism activities in Vietnam. The worrying thing is that tourism environment in many areas has been polluted by the impacts of many economic sectors, in which there is an impact from those tourism activities such as uncontrolled, unplanned construction, increasing of garbage and waste, destruction of coral for producing building materials and etc.
Some provinces such as Da Nang, Da Lat, Binh Thuan, Can Tho, Ho Chi Minh city and so on have mobilized cleaning tourism environment campaigns. However, for sustainable tourism development, the tourism environment protection is not only the duty of local authorities, tourism companies but also responsibilities of tourists as well as residents living there. Visiting beaches in Da Nang, Nha Trang, Vung Tau, Phu Quoc and so on we can see clearly urgent problems of environment pollution due to waste from people peddling wares, unawareness of tourists and residents in throwing garbage away to the beaches and untreated waste water from coastal resident areas, production enterprises directly discharged in sea, etc. All of these are making Vietnam tourism environment lose its score on tourists’ eyes. Tourism is considered as a money printer for the economy. If we only exploit it without maintaining or preserving, one day it will be unable to operate any more. At that time, we have no money from this machine and there is no another machine to replace at the same time.