For Three Local Authorities

There should be measures to reassure tourists by strengthening medical measures, providing medical certificates...

- Check and rectify international guest reception and service activities:

+ The inspection team regularly visits international offices and individuals operating illegally in the tourism sector.

+ Coordinate with competent authorities and businesses welcoming foreign guests, promptly correct illegal business activities, and gradually create a healthy business environment for this market.

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5.3. Recommendations

5.3.1. For the State

Propose that the Representative Offices of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the three localities report to the leaders of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and request the General Department of Tourism to support tourism cooperation between the three localities in: training and fostering tourism management staff, and promoting tourism.

Identifying the three localities of Quang Nam, Da Nang and Thua Thien Hue as national tourism key areas, on that basis, propose the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to support the three localities to quickly implement tourism development planning according to the perspective of regional tourism development.

To support and facilitate the tourism industry of the three localities, we recommend that the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the General Department of Tourism support the following contents:

- The State Steering Committee for Tourism needs to build a reasonable mechanism for the tourism promotion linkage system between localities, ensuring effective combination and cooperation in tourism in general and in tourism service export promotion activities in particular.

- Quickly complete the Project to develop a pilot incentive policy mechanism, applicable to the Central region's key tourism clusters. From there, localities will have the basis to build appropriate linkage strategies, taking advantage of incentive policies for tourism development in the Central region's tourism clusters, first of all the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster.

- Develop and perfect policies to encourage tourism promotion activities of international travel organizations and businesses in many fields.

Financial policies, the State needs to have preferential regimes, support the promotion of tourism service exports such as cutting and abolishing tax and non-tax management tools for services serving international tourists in the group of promotion tools, for example, reducing VAT from 10% to 5% for hotels and travel businesses participating in promotional and discount campaigns.

- Develop and apply a reasonable and stable tax regime, minimize fees and charges for businesses to participate in fairs and festivals abroad, and introduce financial and credit policies to encourage travel and hotel businesses to participate in promotional activities in foreign markets.

- Strengthen incentives to attract various sources of investment capital in tourism promotion activities because the budget capital from the Central and local levels for tourism promotion and development is still limited. The State needs to build a favorable and open investment environment, minimize administrative procedures that cause difficulties in the investment process and implement investment incentive policies for investors investing in tourism service export promotion activities. Investment incentive policies can be applied such as preferential interest rates on investment loans for priority promotion projects and in key international tourism markets, or guarantees for borrowing activities for the purpose of promoting tourism service exports.

- Currently, in the process of tourism development, the three localities are facing difficulties in the lack of rare tour guides (eg: Thailand, Korea, Japan, Spain...), lack of tourist transport vehicles during peak season (45-seat type), it is recommended that the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the General Department of Tourism have their own mechanism for issuing tour guide cards and tourist transport vehicles to provide tour guides and transport vehicles to serve the needs of international tourists when visiting and staying in the three localities in particular and the Central region in general.

- In order for localities to proactively develop plans to promote tourism to foreign markets, it is recommended that the General Department of Tourism send the General Department's plan to participate in tourism promotion and advertising to localities in the fourth quarter of each year so that localities can proactively plan to participate in the following year.

- The General Department of Tourism will be the focal point and conductor in the issue of tourism development cooperation to connect localities to orient and handle; at the same time, support business

Annual fees for localities to participate in tourism promotion activities led by the General Department of Tourism.

Cooperation in tourism development between localities aims to promote the strengths of each place while creating cohesion and mutual support, and is considered an important requirement for promoting tourism development in the region.

- To support and facilitate the development of tourism in the 3 local clusters, it is recommended that the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the General Department of Tourism support the propaganda and promotion work and provide funding to implement the annual tourism development linkage program of the 3 local clusters.

5.3.2. For the three local authorities

It can be said that in recent years, the tourism industry of the three localities has made significant progress. Although certain achievements have been made, the tourism development of the localities is still not commensurate with the inherent potential of the region. There needs to be a breakthrough in regional tourism development linkages such as building a large-scale tourism promotion strategy that has far-reaching and breakthrough effects for the region; focusing on building a regional tourism brand, with a product development strategy that focuses on developing suitable types of entertainment and accommodation services as a basis for building a regional tourism promotion strategy and plan, in which the promotion strategy needs to be focused and according to the local tourist market segment, specifically:

- For local authorities, Departments of Culture, Sports and Tourism: Provide consistent direction according to the annual programs, plans and planning of the local tourism industry on goals, directions and solutions in each stage; create favorable conditions with preferential mechanisms and policies to support tourism businesses, proactively build linkage programs, build tourism products according to the strengths of each locality, linking with businesses to form typical tourism products to serve tourists. Strengthen cooperation in state management of tourism, inspection, tourism environment, training and fostering of human resources, tourism promotion, etc.

- In addition to using the annual State budget allocation, localities need to mobilize resources from enterprises and social organizations to implement the principle of association and cooperation between the State and enterprises.

- Cooperate in building regional tourism economy such as building new tourism routes to develop diverse types of regional tourism and exploit market segments depending on the characteristics and strengths of each locality. Create a chain of regional tourism brands.

- Cooperate in the spirit of mutual support, mutual assistance and mutual benefit, ensuring practical effectiveness for the community, cooperating to preserve tourism resources for sustainable development. Enhance the role of the Tourism Association in local tourism development to mobilize, connect, and support tourism businesses to connect with state management agencies to create a combined strength in the tourism development cooperation program.

- Directing throughout the local tourism industry's annual programs, plans and projects on goals, directions and solutions in each stage;

- Create favorable conditions with preferential mechanisms and policies to support tourism businesses, proactively build linkage programs, build tourism products according to the strengths of each locality, linking with businesses to form unique tourism products to serve tourists.

- Strengthen cooperation in sharing information and experience in state management of tourism, inspection, tourism environment, training and development of human resources, tourism promotion, etc.

5.3.3. For businesses

- It is necessary to proactively link to form a chain of tourism products with preferential prices suitable to tourists' tastes;

- Cooperate in the spirit of mutual support and mutual benefit, ensuring practical effectiveness for the community and businesses participating in economic - cultural - social development, cooperating to preserve tourism resources for the goal of sustainable development.

- Strengthen market research as a basis for supplementing and reviewing cluster promotion plans.

- Invest in making souvenir products suitable for target markets, for example, for the Japanese market, handicrafts such as wooden products, stone products, lacquerware, brocade... have great appeal. Each product should have some Japanese characters to create excitement for tourists.

- Strengthening food hygiene and safety to promote Central Vietnam's culinary products to international tourists. This is one of the factors that makes tourists return to the tourist cluster, ensuring stability in tourism revenue of each business and contributing to tourism revenue of localities in the cluster.

- Tourism businesses need to link chains with handicraft production facilities and local products to increase product export turnover on the one hand and retain international tourists to consume more in localities in the cluster on the other hand.

CONCLUDE

After more than 10 years of implementing tourism development and linkage activities, the three localities of Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam have achieved many remarkable achievements, gradually positioning the tourism brand "3 localities, 1 destination", creating destinations with diverse and quality products, attracting a large number of domestic and international tourists.

With the goal of developing the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster in the context of many economic fluctuations, factors related to disease outbreaks, reducing the number of tourists, as well as reducing tourism revenue, affecting the economic growth rate of localities in the cluster. That context has made the promotion linkage in the cluster even more urgent. If in 2006, when the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism linkage minutes were signed, the need to establish a tourism cluster was necessary, then in the context of the Covid - 19 pandemic showing no signs of cooling down in some key tourism promotion markets of the cluster, the issue of tourism promotion of the cluster is always topical and urgent. Therefore, the author chose the topic "Tourism promotion to attract international visitors to the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster" with the desire to recognize and evaluate the promotion activities being carried out in the cluster, thereby proposing some solutions to strengthen these activities in the new context.

To analyze and evaluate tourism promotion activities in the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster, the author simultaneously conducted a survey and investigation of international tourists, and conducted in-depth interviews with managers from local tourism departments and a number of travel agencies. Combined with the analysis of secondary data collected from the cluster's promotion activity reports over the years, the author drew the following conclusions:

1. The Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster was formed on the basis of common advantages and characteristics of natural conditions, climate, culture and infrastructure conditions, and from the wishes of local managers. Therefore, the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster is a horizontally linked tourism cluster.

2. Experience from other tourism clusters in the world also shows that the existence of a cluster with a core of businesses in the tourism industry is inevitable, helping the cluster's development to be more stable.

3. The current situation of attracting international tourists to the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster shows that most tourist groups focus on the market areas of Northeast Asian countries, Western Europe and potential markets such as Southeast Asia, Australia, the US, India, the number of tourists to the cluster has increased over the years, but tourists' awareness of the cluster's brand is still limited. Tourists often come to the cluster through internet promotion channels, through websites or social tools such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. and through travel agencies. Therefore, promoting tourism through these tools is an issue that needs attention in the promotion strategy of the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster.

4. Promotion activities of tourism clusters show that, because the cluster is formed horizontally, linked in the form of macro, most of the promotion activities come from the perspective of state management agencies, so this connection is still weak due to the lack of a long-term cooperation mechanism, mainly plans are implemented annually, the budget for promotion activities is still limited, promotion activities are not diverse, small scale, mainly focusing on forms such as fairs, seminars, famtrips, using some tools such as leaflets, brochures, maps. Enterprises have not really participated deeply in tourism promotion linkage activities.

5. The reasons for the limitations in tourism promotion to attract international visitors to the Hue - Da Nang - Quang Nam tourism cluster come from both the State, local authorities and enterprises. In particular, the State itself has not had a specific plan, as a premise for the development of this tourism cluster. On the part of the local authorities of the three provinces of Thua Thien Hue, Da Nang and Quang Nam, tourism managers in these three localities have not really realized the importance of tourism promotion, nor do they really want to connect due to the impact of local interests, and due to limitations in the organizational apparatus. Enterprises have not really been interested in the promotion plans proposed by localities. For many years, the mobilization of socialized funding from enterprises has been mostly

as having difficulties. The combination of the above factors has made the results of tourism promotion to attract international visitors to the cluster still modest.

6. Solution groups and 3 groups of recommendations to stakeholders have been proposed based on the analysis of the current situation from Chapter 4 and the context in Chapter 5. The above solution groups are expected to suggest to managers and businesses in the tourism sector that they can propose some solutions to enhance tourism promotion in the new context.

7. The limitation of the Thesis is that it has not analyzed the participation of other parties involved in tourism promotion in the tourism cluster, which are tourism associations, agents such as businesses and people in the promotion process in the cluster. Besides, the Thesis has not analyzed quantitatively the relationship between tourism promotion in the cluster and the effectiveness of attracting tourists to the cluster. In the future, these will be the next research directions of the Thesis author to develop the topic, although it has been studied from many domestic and foreign works, it is still topical and urgent now and in the future.

Due to the limitation of time and knowledge, the Thesis certainly has many shortcomings. The author hopes to receive feedback from scientists, travel and tourism businesses, and tourism managers to contribute to the author's ability to complete the content of the Thesis. The author sincerely thanks!

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