Ha Lond Tourism

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1. Background of the study

Along with the globalization in economic, international tourism is developing rapidly, support the tourism industry become a powerful engine for every nation as a major foreign exchange generator, especially in the Asia and Pacific region. In recent years, Asia - Pacific region is one of the world’s fastest growing tourism areas for attracting visitor arrivals. Many publications present and discuss detailed figures of visitor arrivals, length of stay, occupancy rates, and spending patterns that attest the quantifiable success of this area in the global tourism market (Hall & Page, 2002). Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, generating an estimated 11 percent of global Gross Domestic Product, employing 10.8 percent of the world’s population, reaching a current average the sales of nearly US $ 2,660 billion, and growing at about 11.6 percent per annual. International tourism reached totaled USD $ 733 billion in 2006, worldwide tourists grew up by an estimated 5.4 percent in 2006 (WTO Tourism highlight, 2007)

Vietnam is located in the Indochina peninsula in South East Asia and shares the borders with China in the North, Laos and Cambodia in the West and has her East coast facing the South China Sea. The country is situated within the tropical zone and has a tropical monsoon climate. As Vietnam is a narrow and long country stretching from the south of China down to the Gulf of Thailand, the seasons also vary from the north to the south of the country in the north, there are visibly four seasons. The overall length of the nation from north to south is about l730 km, the width, spreading from east to west, is only about 590 km at the widest point in the north, 420 km in the south, and 52 km is the narrowest part in the centre (VNAT, 2006).

With a thousand year of history, also has an originally traditional culture, a numbers of vestiges, beautiful landscapes and a lot of tourism attractions,... [continues]

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