Developing Thua Thien Hue tourism in the context of international economic integration

this Member into the territory of another Member);

ii) Consumption outside the territory (consumers of one Member travel to the territory of another Member to consume services);

iii) Commercial presence (a service supplier of a Member establishes forms of presence such as 100% foreign-owned company, joint venture company, branch, etc. in the territory of another Member to provide services);

iv) Presence of natural persons (natural persons providing services of one Member moving to the territory of another Member to supply services).

In its commitments to the WTO, Vietnam commits to not restrict methods (i) and (ii). For method (iii), Vietnam also commits to removing foreign ownership restrictions for foreign enterprises investing in Vietnam in the form of joint ventures and associations in travel agency and tourism business activities. However, foreign-invested travel service providers are only allowed to provide inbound tourism services and domestic travel for tourists to Vietnam as part of the service of bringing tourists to Vietnam. Foreign-owned enterprises are not allowed to provide domestic tourism services. Although foreign companies are allowed to send managers to work in Vietnam, at least 20% of the company's managers must be Vietnamese. For method (iv), Vietnam still does not allow foreign tour guides to practice in Vietnam.

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- Positive impacts

+ Increase international tourism market share: based on the method of calculating total tourism demand according to the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), which is an internationally accepted statistical standard for assessing tourism impacts, tourism activities include the comprehensive economic activities of tourism, other economic sectors related to and serving tourism activities such as goods serving tourists, government consumption for tourism activities (including investment consumption for museums,

theaters, security, customs, aviation services, etc.). Therefore, deeper and broader international integration will help increase the tourism market share of countries around the world. It will open up opportunities for the tourism industry to exploit and develop tourism potential, promote tourism brands and products abroad more easily and effectively.

+ Opportunity for reform: For tourism businesses, integration is a pressure to have strong reforms within each business if they want to survive in the market. Vietnamese tourism businesses will be able to access and learn advanced management skills from large tourism corporations in the world. In addition, foreign tourism businesses with many years of experience operating internationally will help transfer customer exploitation experience and train staff to do tourism promotion and marketing in Vietnam.

+ Expanding the market and developing new types of tourism: Allowing more foreign-invested travel agencies to participate in providing business services to send customers to the domestic market will increase the capacity to exploit inbound tourists (international tourists to Vietnam) and make inbound tourism activities develop strongly in the coming years. In particular, the number of business and MICE tourists will increase sharply after Vietnam joins the WTO and successfully organizes the APEC event.

+ Open up new competitive opportunities for our country's tourism, thereby attracting more foreign investment, creating jobs, upgrading infrastructure and equipment for tourism development. Vietnam tourism can learn from the experiences of regions and countries around the world quickly and easily.

+ Opportunity to improve and have an effective support policy system: Create opportunities for policy makers to better grasp the situation and development trends of the world, from which they can propose appropriate policies for tourism development. The Government's commitment to building transparency and predictability in regulations and policies on economic development in general and tourism development in particular

Tourism in particular will create a premise for healthier development for tourism businesses.

- The challenges

+ Preserving traditional cultural values: International integration will create conditions for economic exchange between countries, and at the same time, cultural activities will also be exchanged. Therefore, besides the opportunity to proactively absorb the world's cultural values on the basis of promoting the identity of national cultural traditions, there will be a risk of widespread, unselective absorption, leading to the loss of traditional cultural identity and being dissolved into the globalized world.

+ Increased environmental pressure: Along with integration and openness, the rapid development of many economic sectors, especially industries with foreign capital and technology investment, on the one hand brings economic benefits to the host country, but also creates great pressure on the environment, the risk of destroying the ecological environment, reducing biodiversity and that will damage the tourism industry, giving rise to unsustainable factors for tourism development. Many lessons from the reality of developing industrial parks, urban development projects, large entertainment projects... with foreign investment in Vietnam in recent times have also demonstrated this negative impact of integration.

+ Competition: This is an inevitable factor in the process of international integration. Competition is an opportunity in the process of international integration but is also a big challenge for countries. Currently, the expansion of multinational corporations is and will be a big threat to tourism businesses in developing countries. These corporations have advantages in capital, technology, experience in organizing production, business, and experience in competing in the market, and will dominate the competition. International integration creates increasing competitive pressure on tourism products. If tourism businesses in a country do not meet the requirements of integration, they will be annexed.

+ Quality labor market mobility: This is a disadvantage due to integration for developing countries when preferential policies for

workers are not satisfied. Integration allows workers to choose suitable workplaces and therefore qualified and skilled workers will seek to work in developed countries or foreign-invested enterprises, international organizations with better incentives. As a result, integration will have a negative impact on human resources of underdeveloped or developing countries like Vietnam.

Join the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)

The ASEAN Economic Community was officially established on December 31, 2015 and its establishment is of great significance in helping the ASEAN Community become more complete with three pillars: politics - security, economy, and culture - society. The purpose of establishing the AEC is to create a common market and unified production base for ASEAN member countries, from which goods, services, investment capital, and labor in ASEAN will flow freely in the region. In addition, the goal of the AEC is to promote equitable economic development, creating a region with a dynamic economy and high competitiveness to serve as a foundation for ASEAN to fully integrate into the global economy.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has undergone a long development process before, the establishment of the AEC at the end of 2015 marked the comprehensive integration of the economies of 10 Southeast Asian countries, creating a common market of a region with a population of 600 million people and an annual GDP of nearly

2,500 billion USD. In addition, the establishment of AEC along with Vietnam's active participation in free trade agreements will create motivation for businesses to expand markets, attract investment, boost exports, cut import costs, lower product prices, and access larger markets. This event is expected to bring both opportunities and challenges to people and businesses in Vietnam.

As a member of ASEAN, Vietnam's tourism industry has participated extensively and effectively. Vietnam has signed the ASEAN Mutual Recognition Agreement on Tourism Professionals (MRA - TP) to serve as a basis for developing human resources.

ASEAN tourism human resources and facilitate labor mobility in the region. Vietnam Tourism has participated in building 130 common tourism products to connect at least 2 countries in ASEAN according to thematic groups such as nature tourism, cultural and heritage tourism, community tourism, sea and river tourism, and actively implemented the ASEAN tourism marketing strategy 2011 - 2015 with the title "Southeast Asia - feel the warmth" focusing on exploiting the Chinese and Indian markets, experiential and creative tourists, discovery tourists, business tourists, long-stay tourists and the elderly, and intra-ASEAN tourists. Every year, Vietnam Tourism participates in the TRAVEX International Tourism Fair on the sidelines of the ASEAN Tourism Forum, participates and makes active contributions at regular and thematic meetings. Common cooperation frameworks are: ACMECS economic cooperation (economic cooperation including 5 countries Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam); GMS cooperation (also known as the Greater Mekong Subregion cooperation program, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Yunnan province, Guangxi province of China); CLMV cooperation (including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam); Cooperation between ASEAN and partner countries and organizations (ASEAN with 3 countries China, Japan, Korea; ASEAN with Russia, ASEAN with India, ASEAN with the World Tourism Organization UNWTO, ASEAN with the Asian Development Bank ADB...), and bilateral tourism cooperation to contribute to the tourism cooperation mechanism in ASEAN.

Regarding the tourism industry, member countries in the AEC community have signed a decree on ASEAN Tourism Integration with the following specific contents:

- Accelerate tourism liberalization: Eliminate market access and national treatment restrictions to achieve trade liberalization in the tourism industry.

- Marketing and promotion of ASEAN tourism: Encourage the private sector to participate in joint promotion and marketing programs for ASEAN tourism activities such as organizing ASEAN Hip Hop Pass; Carry out activities

Diversify activities to attract ASEAN tourism through promoting a number of package tours in addition to the main markets such as China, Japan, Korea and India, and expanding to other potential markets such as North America, the EU, and the Russian Federation. Member countries use the same logo and ASEAN Tourism campaign in exhibitions, media, and publications in campaigns to enhance the image of ASEAN as a common tourist destination; Organize a common ASEAN Tourism Area in international tourism fairs to continuously enhance the image of ASEAN as a common tourist destination; Work towards a promotion program introduced by ASEAN Leaders on television as a common destination for tourism and investment at ASEAN Summits; Develop criteria for the ASEAN Tourism Heritage Area and procedures for the ASEAN Tourism Heritage title.

- Investment in tourism: Countries provide incentives for tourism infrastructure development to encourage private investment in ASEAN countries; Support and facilitate the implementation of approved tourism projects under the ASEAN Priority Projects Programme (APPS); Conduct a study to identify tourism sectors that are likely to attract investment and measures to be taken to promote investment in the tourism sector; Develop and implement eco-tourism projects to encourage investment in tourism.

- Tourism standards: Countries develop ASEAN tourism standards, through the initial development of hotel level standards focusing on the hotel environmental management certification system.

- Human resource development: Countries shall develop appropriate minimum standards within ASEAN for professional tourism agencies; Develop a network for tourism resource development and management; Promote Human Resource Development activities through the establishment of an intra-ASEAN program including exchange programs, cross-training and cross-certification activities; Develop a research program and strengthen the cooperation network among tourism stakeholders and establish a Tourism Development Bank.

ASEAN data hub to facilitate the rapid development of the tourism industry.

- Facilitation of Intra-ASEAN Travel: Study the feasibility of developing some form of facilitation of visa-related procedures for the travel of non-ASEAN nationals within ASEAN.

When Vietnam joins AEC, the tourism industry faces many opportunities as well as challenges:

- About opportunities:

+ The countries within the AEC bloc are very close geographically, have many cultural similarities and have long-term diplomatic, political and social ties... In addition, the AEC intra-bloc market of nearly 600 million people, with an annual GDP of nearly 2,500 billion USD, will certainly create momentum for the development of potential tourist sources for the Vietnamese market.

+ With preferential policies to create a common market in the region, Vietnam is a dynamically developing country with investment attraction, so it will be an attractive destination to receive investment capital, goods and services from ASEAN countries and Vietnam's tourism industry will be a field that attracts a lot of investment capital from ASEAN countries to build infrastructure for tourism. In addition, along with the development of economic flows, there will be the development of tourism service flows, so in the future, Vietnam's tourism industry will benefit a lot when Vietnam joins the AEC.

+ When the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is established, the road network and transport infrastructure between countries in the region will be invested in and upgraded to create increasingly deep connections between countries in the bloc. In addition, it will also facilitate the Vietnamese tourism industry in attracting investment capital from ASEAN countries to build infrastructure for tourism. The development of transport infrastructure will be a criterion to promote the development of Vietnam's tourism industry.

+ When joining AEC, with the free movement of labor within the bloc in the tourism and hotel industry, it will create opportunities for the Vietnamese tourism industry to have a high-quality labor source from countries with strengths in tourism in the region. In addition, Vietnamese tourism businesses will also have access to modern management methods being applied in a number of countries in the region that are strongly developing in the tourism sector.

- About challenges:

+ Regarding services: Currently, Vietnamese service enterprises are still being supported by the State's policies, so they have not yet truly competed with foreign enterprises operating in the Vietnamese market. When joining the AEC, with the free flow of services within the AEC, Vietnamese enterprises in the service sector will certainly be placed in a truly competitive environment and much more fierce competition.

+ Regarding the workforce: When joining the AEC, with the free movement of labor within a number of industries (including tourism), if the tourism industry does not have adequate preparation in terms of necessary skills for the workforce such as: skills, foreign languages, professionalism... then it will certainly encounter many difficulties.

Join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)

On March 8, 2018, Vietnam and 10 countries including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand, Peru officially signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in Chile. The CPTPP Agreement has been effective since December 30, 2018 for the first 6 countries to complete the ratification of the Agreement including Mexico, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.

For the tourism industry, when participating in CPTPP, this sector will face many favorable opportunities, but also many challenges.

- About opportunities: