In its development strategy, Thua Thien Hue aims to attract luxury tourists who have high spending. This orientation is suitable for the ancient capital of Hue - a destination of rich culture.
Luxury tourists will choose high-end services
Between serving 10 tourists with proceeds of VND 10 million and 5 others with the same amount, tourist businesses always want to serve the latter.
By serving a low number of guests (yet with high profits), tourism enterprises will save the costs incurred, and be able to offer the most perfect services as well as carry out their facility long-term maintenance.
That is the ideal goal of all destinations throughout the country and the world, including Hue ancient capital. If the tourism sector serves tourists within its appropriate capacity while destinations and the heritage system serve under the overload threshold, heritages will be long-term conserved with a mitigation of restoration expenses.
According to the Provincial Tourism Association, MICE partners have not had any tour arrangement or book in Thua Thien Hue yet. Meanwhile, they have booked quite a lot of MICE tours in neighboring localities.
The concern of Hue tourism is at the exploitation of domestic MICE visitors. The goal of attracting luxury, high-spending and long-stay tourists has been set by the Thua Thien Hue tourism industry over the past 10 years.
As a destination of the culture “concentration”, an ancient and peaceful city, as well as one of the first localities in the country to exploit tourism, Hue’s gradual transition from quantity to quality tourism fits rules of development. This is also a solution for a better preservation and conservation of the monument system.
So, is Hue tourism capable of segmenting a number of tourist market for a shift to its focus on exploiting luxury guests with high spending?
In the tourism business, like any other industries, business people conduct a segmentation towards serving their target guest segments only when the number of guests using their service is too large. In other words, when demands surpassed supply, business people will confidently make a decision about ignoring some guest segments.
In terms of this criterion, Hue tourism will find it difficult to ignore some markets in order to focus on only a certain number of visitors. There has not been an official study on the overload threshold of tourist destinations in Thua Thien Hue, but the number of 2.05 million visitors in 2022 is still low compared to the provincial capacity of tourism.
As for accommodation services, there are 853 accommodation facilities in the province, with more than 13.1 thousand rooms and 21.1 thousand beds. The total number of guests staying in the first 2 months of 2023 was about 250,000 turns of tourists, only reaching about 25% of the maximum room usage capacity.
The more important criterion is a proactive approach to tourist sources of Hue tourism. Is the attraction of the ancient capital strong enough for tourist enterprises to be “pickier” about choosing guest segments? In terms of this criterion, Hue is still quite passive, with difficulties in the air transport, businesses’ strengths, limitations of weather impacts...
All of these factors require the tourism industry to conduct an evaluation of practices, new opportunities and challenges to build a suitable road map as every locality aims to attract luxury tourists...
To attract luxury guests, high-end services must be in place. High-spending guests certainly require quality, rigorous and professional services for a deserved experience in accordance with the expenses they pay.
Story: Duc Quang - Photo: Quang Sang