Experiences of Some Provinces in Laos and Vietnam on Tourism Development

tourist attractions have been identified.

- Create a framework for the effective implementation of tourism development plans and policies as well as lay the foundation for the regular management of tourism activities through the provision of the necessary legal frameworks and organizational systems.

- Create a framework for effective coordination of public and private efforts in investing in tourism development.

- Create a basis for regular control and maintain tourism development orientation.

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As important as tourism development planning is, unplanned tourism development will have many consequences. Without a master plan, there will be a phenomenon of inconsistent tourism networks, leading to destinations that may be localized or sparse, causing boredom for tourists. In addition to the obvious negative impacts on the natural environment, the consequences are also manifested in many other aspects for the tourism development area.

* Tourism development policies

Having the right policies and timely and rapid tourism development orientation is a very important factor to develop tourism into a key economic sector.

The State needs to have policies and measures to promote international cooperation in tourism with countries and international organizations on the basis of equality and mutual benefit; in accordance with the laws of each party, international laws and practices to develop tourism, contributing to strengthening cooperation, friendship and mutual understanding among nations. The State manages the macro-economy through tourism development policies as follows:

- The State has policies to develop, embellish, protect, restore, and maintain cultural and historical tourist attractions, and protect other tourism resources...

- Tourism management through the preservation, protection and development of cultural, historical, natural and community ecological tourism, considering tourism as an indispensable part of the national economy to develop, promote production, increase on-site exports, create jobs, generate revenue and improve the lives of ethnic people. The State and society promote the dissemination of ethnic holidays and festivals about customs, cultural arts, and good heroic traditions of the people to promote domestic tourism and attract

Foreign visitors come to visit, relax, entertain, trade and socialize [31].

- Respect and protect legitimate interests, including ensuring the safety of tourists coming to the Lao PDR in general and to Bo Keo province in particular, paying attention to, creating favorable conditions and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations both domestic and foreign organizations visiting or investing in tourism development.

- Develop policies to develop local available capabilities such as discovery tourism, nature tourism, eco-tourism, regional tourism, adventure tourism... Create a unique style.

In addition, the State has a policy of training truly professional travel staff, good at expertise, foreign languages, and dedicated service style.

- Brand promotion activities and tourism development encouragement

In recent years, tourism has received attention from the provincial government, specifically the 3rd Congress of the Bo Keo Provincial Party Committee.

Pay attention to building provincial tourism infrastructure to welcome domestic and foreign visitors to visit: nature, culture, traditional history of the nation, consolidate and improve the tourism service industry to attract more and more tourists [30, p.39].

To let domestic tourists know the tourism development trend will promote domestic tourism to grow, bring income to the locality, reduce foreign tourism, and earn foreign currency for the country.

Make international visitors know Lao PDR as a tourist destination and decide to travel to Laos more, contributing to poverty reduction of the people.

Regarding tourism promotion and development is a very important issue of development strategy. The content of tourism promotion and development includes:

- Propaganda through the construction of a Lao tourism information center at the National Tourism Administration, building website content to promote the image of the homeland, addresses, and destinations so that not only domestic tourists know but also foreign tourists, through the website they know the addresses,

destinations through internet advertising sites

- Promotion through regional tourism centers: the North in Luang Pra Bang, the Central in Sa Van Na Khet and the South in Pac Se. It is possible to build kiosks in major cities at important locations to provide information services for tourists and coordinate with the Department of Culture and Information to distribute (sell) newspapers, magazines...

- Propaganda by producing and printing other advertising materials such as: maps, guidebooks, brochures, posters, billboards, VCDs (documentaries), souvenirs of the National Tourism Administration, postcards, parcels, greeting cards... These are products used in tourism exhibitions, distributed to tourists and people interested in tourism.

- Propaganda through domestic and foreign mass media such as: radio, television, newspapers, travel magazines...

- Organize traditional festivals to attract tourists at 3 levels: central, provincial and district.

- Distribute free tourist maps and tourist complex maps so that visitors can know the highlights they can and should visit.

- Training a team of professional tour guides. This is one of the most effective promotional channels because they are the ones who directly convey information to tourists. In order for tourists to have good and accurate information, it requires tours (travel agencies) to have a team of guides who are good at expertise and have experience in the field of dissemination. The guides must understand the local customs and practices that bring tourists to bring them intangible values, as well as tangible values to tourists to turn them into tourists, but they are also people who promote the image and people they have visited.

- Check and monitor.

Rapid tourism development will give rise to negative behaviors such as over-exploitation of tourist facilities, areas, and spots, pollution of the ecological environment, tourism business activities that are contrary to the cultural identity of the country and locality... First of all, provincial authorities must direct the regular implementation of inspection and examination work.

Supervise tourism development to prevent and stop possible negative events. To effectively implement this content, provincial authorities need to do a good job of disseminating, popularizing, and educating the law and regulations of the province on investment, exploitation, and development. Tourist areas and spots in the area must register and operate according to business registration, especially conditional business activities such as accommodation business, travel business, etc. At the same time, it is necessary to strictly handle all violations of tourism laws in the area and closely coordinate with neighboring provinces to avoid the situation mentioned above.

1.2.4. Factors affecting tourism development

There can be many ways to classify influencing factors, depending on the research approach. Within the framework of analysis for a locality, influencing factors on tourism development include:

One, tourism resources and weather, climate

Tourism resources include natural landscapes, historical and cultural relics, man-made structures (tangible and intangible), and other cultural and humanistic products that can be used to meet entertainment and sightseeing needs. Thus, tourism resources include natural resources and cultural and humanistic resources that have been, are being, or have not been exploited.

Natural tourism resources: Including structures formed by nature, which humans can exploit to satisfy the needs of tourists. Natural products that humans can exploit include elements of terrain, geology, geomorphology, climate, hydrology, ecosystems, and natural landscapes.

Human tourism resources: Are products created by humans in the development process, including traditional elements, culture, folk art, historical and revolutionary relics, architectural works, archeology and other intangible cultural heritages (songs, costumes, etc.) that can be used to serve people. Thus, in the development process, each region, each locality, each country builds certain tangible works and intangible values. However, only tangible works and intangible values that attract tourists, satisfy the needs of visitors and tourists, and are put into exploitation to create socio-economic efficiency are considered resources.

tourism resources. Each country and each locality often has unique, distinctive cultural and historical relics or attractive intangible values - which are important resources in the tourism development programs of each locality and country.

Weather and climate have a strong impact on tourism development. Tourism business activities are greatly affected by weather and climate and are highly seasonal. If the tourist's accommodation has unfavorable natural conditions such as cold, humid climate, little sunlight, monotonous terrain, and not rich flora and fauna, it will be difficult to attract a large number of tourists. Places with warm climates, diverse terrain, amazing natural scenery, rare flora or beautiful beaches are places that attract tourists, creating the necessary conditions for tourism development.

Seasonality comes from both the characteristics of tourism products and the need for tourists to rest during vacations such as summer vacations, Tet, holidays... Seasonality depends on the weather and climate, most clearly manifested in the form of beach tourism in countries affected by tropical climates, typically the north central region of Vietnam.

Two, the price of the product

No matter how attractive a tourism product is, if the price is too high, few people will choose it. The price factor directly affects the tourism development of a region or a country in a certain period. In the current economic crisis, the impact of the tourism price factor on the socio-economic development of each locality is more clearly demonstrated.

In the tourism market, the volume of tourism goods and services supplied in a certain period of time, supply increases when its price increases and vice versa. The law of profit promotes supply in the market, governs and regulates the tourism market. When the factors constituting the input price of tourism products remain unchanged, due to the increase in the price of each tourism product, the suppliers will earn more profits and therefore, the supply in the market increases. From the demand side, the price of tourism products decreases, which will increase the demand for tourism and vice versa according to the law of demand. Normally, the formation of demand and the volume of demand are inversely proportional to the change in price. If the price of goods increases, the volume of demand in tourism decreases. For tourism products, where the price of tourism goods is low, the demand for tourism

tourism there will increase. However, this impact is not entirely true for all tourism products, such as medical tourism.

Three, the diversity and attractiveness of tourism products

Tourism product packages have great appeal to tourists, and are an important factor affecting tourism development. Tourism products are a collection of necessary services to serve tourists. Based on tourism resources, tourism organizations and individuals can divide tourism products into many diverse and rich products to meet the different needs of tourists.

Tourism products are consumed on the spot, during the journey. In the case of tourism products of a production nature (singing, festivals, etc.), production and consumption take place at the same time. This characteristic requires product suppliers to prepare carefully because if the product is not perfect, it will affect the reputation and the number of future customers due to the difficult nature of the product to repair, compensate or return.

Since tourism products are consumed during the journey, the evaluation of product quality can only take place after the product has been consumed. This characteristic of tourism products gives an important suggestion to managers of countries, localities and destinations to continuously improve product quality, meet the increasing demands of tourists, and at the same time, this is an effective promotional channel to attract potential tourists.

The diversity and richness of tourism products are important because if tourism products are poor, sketchy, based on purely natural elements or purely tangible and intangible values, it will be difficult to attract tourists, especially the continued consumption of those tourists in the future.

Four, infrastructure for tourism development and destination safety

Tourism infrastructure includes transportation infrastructure and tourist destinations (restaurants, hotels, entertainment areas, sports areas, other value-added services such as health care, beauty care, etc.). It can be said that technical infrastructure is the bridge between tourists and tourism products, creating conditions to turn the tourism resources of a region or locality into a unique one.

to form a complete tourism product to serve tourists.

Infrastructure factors have a strong impact on tourism development of each locality as well as a country. If transportation is too difficult, the destination infrastructure does not meet certain requirements, it will be very difficult to attract tourists.

Among the elements that make up the infrastructure, the transportation network plays a particularly important role, connecting tourists to tourist destinations. There are many types of transportation for tourism such as passenger transportation and transportation at tourist destinations.

In addition to "hard" infrastructure, socio-economic infrastructure also has an important impact on tourism development: Culture, society, security at destinations; developed trade and service systems, internet, mobile phone signals, card payment systems, automatic withdrawals... are some of the factors that customers will consider when deciding to choose to consume a certain tourism product.

Thus, developing the infrastructure system will be both a lever and a condition for developing tourism, attracting tourists, increasing revenue...

A tourist destination cannot attract tourists if there is war. Tourism can only thrive in peaceful and stable conditions. In addition, social order and safety and the safety of tourists also directly affect consumer choices. If a beautiful place is often the scene of theft, pickpocketing, etc., it will be difficult to attract tourists. A safe destination is also understood as a place where there are no infectious diseases such as cholera, bird flu or acute diarrhea, etc. In the context of current tourism globalization, safe destinations at the national level (political stability) and local level for tourists have a direct impact on their choices.

Five, tourism development policy

Tourism development policy has a decisive influence on tourism development of a locality or a country. If a locality or a country possesses many tourism resources but does not choose the right development policy or does not pay attention to tourism, this industry cannot develop. Tourism development policy is part of the overall strategy for socio-economic development of a country, region or locality.

Many countries and localities have chosen tourism as a key, spearhead sector, but it is not separate or isolated from other policies, but has a close relationship and connection in the overall strategy. The system of tourism development policies is quite rich, from the overall development strategy of the industry to the partial policies to implement the general development strategy.

1.3. EXPERIENCES OF SOME PROVINCES IN LAOS AND VIETNAM IN TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

1.3.1. Experience in tourism development of some provinces in Laos

- Experience of Luang Pa Bang province (world heritage)

Luang Prabang Province is a major economic, political, cultural and tourist center of the Northern part of the Lao PDR. With its natural, cultural, economic and social potentials, being the ancient capital city with a long history of a thousand years, a world cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO, Luang Prabang Province has all the good conditions to develop tourism into a key economic sector of the country. Luang Prabang Province is located in the Northern Laos of the Nam Khan River Delta and the Mekong River. Luang Prabang Province is also the gateway to 8 Northern provinces, bordering Phong Xa Ly Province and Son La Province (Socialist Republic of Vietnam) to the North, Xieng Khouang Province and Hua Phan Province to the West, Udom Xay Province and Xay Nha Bu Ly Province to the South, and Vientiane Province to the East.

Luang Pra Bang province is 360 km from Vientiane capital along National Highway 13 from North to South, mountainous terrain, narrow Mekong river delta, this terrain creates conditions for Luang Pra Bang province to develop a diverse economy. The climate in the area has high mountains and hills, cool climate, the lowest temperature is 14 0 C, the highest temperature is 40 0 C. Water resources of Luang Pra Bang province have river and stream basins with a total storage area of 13,000 km 3 with a length of 15,470 km of rivers and streams, annual rainfall of about 9.13 billion m 3 .

With the natural conditions and natural resources mentioned above, Luang Pra Bang province has very favorable conditions for tourists to relax.

In terms of socio-economic conditions, Luang Pra Bang province has the third largest population in the country with a fairly rapid growth rate, increasing 1.65 times since 2000 and an average growth rate of 3.35%. Luang Pra Bang province's economy has achieved fairly continuous growth, with a growth rate of

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