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| The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has predicted that international aviation will boom in 2022, but only about 44% of what it was before the pandemic. Photo: VNA. |
Aviation is ready
According to the roadmap, since March 15, all localities will be allowed to welcome international guests, instead of only seven pilot localities at present. Mr. Bui Doan Ne, Vice Chairman of Vietnam Airlines Association (VATA), International Air Transport Association (IATA), predicted that international aviation will explode in 2022, by about 44 % compared to before the pandemic.
This shows a huge challenge from the competition of international and Vietnamese airlines. Therefore, IATA has also recommended the reopening, but governments need to support airlines.
After the end of the pandemic, VATA and aviation businesses discussed a plan and offered solutions and scenarios to anticipate, ensuring resource availability to reopen the market. At this point, the aviation industry is ready to recover and the opening of the economy, aviation and international tourism after two years of closures is in line with the needs of businesses.
However, Mr. Bui Doan Ne said that the challenges for airlines are not small, requiring the efforts of businesses as well as support from the Government and localities.
One of the big challenges, when Vietnam reopens the tourism market, is that it has to re-promote the market, which will increase costs, such as costs of trade promotion, escalating oil prices, leading to increased transport costs.
In order to support aviation businesses, the Vice President of VATA proposed to raise the environmental tax support level to 70-80%, even 100% for businesses.
This will help the airline industry along with the tourism industry both reduce costs and attract tourists. Aviation and tourism are very important industries, having a very close relationship, influencing and promoting each other, contributing to the economy, so it is necessary to have supportive policies, such as credit packages to stimulate the economy to ensure infrastructure, help businesses reduce difficulties, and help employees.
“In particular, the issuance of visas cannot only be opened to old countries, but needs to be expanded to new regions and new markets to further expand the number of tourists. In terms of time, it should not be limited to only fifteen days, but can be extended up to thirty days to attract more tourists.”
“When the market is open, the demand for travel will increase rapidly, the connection of air traffic with the road needs to improve, infrastructure needs to be prioritized for investment, attracting participants from international airlines. The local terminals also need to improve the quality of infrastructure,” suggested Mr. Bui Doan Ne.
Five recommendations
Assessing the difficulties in the process of reopening airlines, Mr. Nguyen Quang Trung, Head of Planning and Development Department of Vietnam Airlines, said that due to the pandemic and difficult financial situation, the possibility of development of airlines and travel companies at the moment is weak. Many businesses, companies and business households serving tourism have been affected by Covid-19 leading to bankruptcy and they need time to recover their service capacity.
Therefore, in order for tourism to really take off, a representative of Vietnam Airlines said that it is necessary to strengthen the organization and promote the image of Vietnam – a safe, friendly, attractive destination, focusing on a few key markets such as Northeast Asia, Europe, America, Australia. If tourism is identified as a spearhead, it is necessary to have a larger national scale to promote Vietnam’s tourism.
In addition, it is necessary to accelerate the implementation of the vaccine passport program and join international systems to simplify procedures for tourists. At the same time, promulgate regulations, procedures and guidelines for international tourists, constantly updating them on mass media.
In addition, it is also necessary to coordinate between departments, sectors and businesses in the aviation – tourism chain to develop a roadmap for developing Vietnam’s destinations, specifying the roles of the parties involved, and having policies in place, as well as suitable incentives for participating businesses.
Finally, Vietnam Airlines believes that it is necessary to deploy a system to connect and share passenger data between airlines, hotels and travel companies to improve the guest experience and serve market research.