Virtual Expo session offers cautiously confident view about Vietnam’s travel industry

VIETNAM. A fascinating session on how Vietnam is faring in the race to reopen for travel, led by its strong vaccine roll out and focus on health, was staged as part of the Knowledge Hub programme at last month’s Virtual Travel Retail Expo. We are pleased to bring this key discussion to you in detail.

Anyone viewing the session, titled Leading Vietnam Out of Crisis into a New Age of Opportunity, will have emerged with stronger confidence in the speed of return to travel, not just to Vietnam, but across the wider world.

Talking to Martin Moodie were Phillip Nguyễn, Chief Executive Officer at IPP Travel Retail and Vice President Business Development Imex Pan Pacific Group, Vietnam; Nitin Kapoor Chairman and General Director, AstraZeneca Vietnam & Asia Area Frontier Markets; and Luke Treloar, Partner, Head of Strategy, National Head of Healthcare and Life Sciences, KPMG.

The ebullient Phillip Nguyễn speaking during the session, where he championed Vietnam and its safety first progress towards reopening for international travel

The session started with three detailed presentations, with Nguyễn presenting key facts about IPP and the airport and tourism eco-system into Vietnam. He was followed by two highly informative perspectives on the world’s and Vietnam’s rollout of vaccination and approaches to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic from Kapoor and Treloar.

On Vietnam’s progress on vaccination rollout, Nguyễn said: “We only started receiving vaccines really this year, in terms of vaccination and the speed I hear some days we get a million vaccinated a day; I’m so surprised that that’s even feasible. But Vietnam really has this iron will to get things done.”

A summary of IPP Travel Retail’s duty free store interests in Vietnam (click to enlarge)

He added: “I am very hopeful because what we can, and need to, project right now is that the science behind vaccination works. I think today we are able to say confidently that Vietnam will be ready to reopen quite soon.”

At the time this session was broadcast on 12 October, AstraZeneca had so far provided more than 1.5 billion vaccine doses to 170+ countries at no profit during the pandemic. Of the 57 million doses administered up to that point in Vietnam, AstraZeneca was responsible for 61% of those.

This graphic shows how Vietnam was succeeding in forcing a downward trend in COVID-19 cases (click to enlarge)

The pharmaceutical giant’s Kapoor discussed the challenges of the Vietnam vaccination programme and the spread of distribution: “One of the benefits when this vaccine came out, and we were working with Oxford University on our vaccine, is the storage condition and the favourable conditions to transport [the vaccines] which requires just a normal temperature. That makes it quite easy to move around the country.

“Vietnam is one of those countries where they do have facilities to easily transport so we don’t see that much disparity between the city and rural areas. If this was a cold storage product where you need to freeze at minus 50, minus 60, minus 70 degrees we would be talking about something completely different here.

AstraZeneca’s Nitin Kapoor (above) and KPMG’s Luke Treloar (below) speaking during the live session, where they shared insights into the vaccination roll out and the pursuit of herd immunity from COVID-19

“The healthcare system here in Vietnam, the government’s focus, and the drive [to tackle COVID-19] is absolutely incredible. And they have done a very good job in making sure that the vaccines reach as far as possible.

“I think we don’t see the disparity [between major cities and rural areas]. Of course, there will be some areas where it’s slightly slower. But then from a scientific standpoint, if you’re in a remote province where it’s not crowded, and you don’t have too much urbanisation, you could also argue that the urgency is also technically a bit less because of the [lower] need for social distancing and so on.

“So I think the strategy has been right. You ringfenced the border, and then you pick up the pockets where it’s densely populated, and then you work your way out from there. And I think that’s been working really well for Vietnam.”

The key elements in the Vietnam Government’s economy reopening strategy (click to enlarge)

During his presentation, Luke Treloar presented some encouraging statistics towards herd immunity across the world, highlighting that the G20 countries (which contain many of Vietnam’s key tourism source markets) are just two months away [again at the time of the session on 12 October -Ed] from reaching the 75% population vaccinated to achieve that. Meanwhile, reaching the magic herd immunity number for the wider world was estimated to be about six months away.

Treloar said: “There is the hope that once we reach that 75% metric for the wealthier countries, all the efforts and the pipeline [of vaccine distribution] will snowball across the developing world. And we’ll all have a very quick return back to safety and to travel.”

Looking ahead to key source market tourists returning to Vietnam, Nguyễn said: “The Russian tourists are coming for a month already, the seven-day quarantine we currently have in place is not a problem to them!

KPMG plotted a predicted path to herd immunity among Vietnam’s key travel source markets (click to enlarge)

“We might not win the Chinese pax today, maybe they might come after the Beijing Winter Olympics. We might not yet get the Korean pax, because there’s still strict protocols for inbound to Korea.

“But we will take this step by step. I do believe in order for us to attract international tourists, we must start with domestic tourism through our domestic airports once again. There are so many beautiful mountains, seaside, countryside here – I do believe a lot of people are missing Mother Nature and Vietnam has a lot to offer here.”

Nguyễn concluded: “Vietnam, our company and our partners here in Vietnam are looking forward to welcoming all of the viewers here today for a well-deserved vacation. So please keep us always in mind, and we will be ready to welcome everyone safely back in Vietnam in due time.”

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