Research on state management for community-based tourism development in some Northwestern provinces of Vietnam - Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Thực phẩm Tp. Hồ Chí Minh

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RESEARCH ON STATE MANAGEMENT

FOR COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

IN SOME NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES OF VIETNAM

Tran Thu Phuong*

Date received the article: 3/4/2020
Date received the review results: 5/10/2020

Date published the article: 27/10/2020

Abstract: Community based tourism (CBT) development is a topic that is currently of 
in-terest to many researchers and managers. In Vietnam, CBT was developed many years ago and 
has been increasingly encouraged to develop. In that context, the study of state management 
for community-based tourism development, especially at the provincial level, has a very 
im-portant signifi cance. Although there have been some domestic and foreign studies on this topic, 
however, so far, there has been no comprehensive study on state management activities for CBT 
development in the North-western region. The objective of the paper is to propose a number of 
solutions to improve the state management of CBT development in some Northwestern 
provinc-es on the basis of analyzing the current state of CBT development management. Proposed 
solu-tions are related to reforming the formulation of strategies, planning, CBT development plans; 
perfecting policies, regulations related to CBT development, and strengthening the inspection, 
examination of CBT development activities.

Keywords: State management, community-based tourism, Northwestern provinces.

* Faculty of Tourism, Hanoi Open University

1. Introduction

The Northwestern region in this
study includes 4 provinces of Lai Chau,
Dien Bien, Son La and Hoa Binh. The
re-gion has a natural area of 3,741.6 km2,
accounting for 11.3% of the national area.
The population in 2019 was 2,701,402
peo-ple, accounting for 2.8% of the country’s
population. According to “Master plan on
Vietnam’s tourism development to 2020,
a vision to 2030”, the Northwest belongs
to the Northern midland and mountainous

tourist area. This is an important strategic
area with great potential and advantages
for socio-economic development,
nation-al defense and security of the North and
the whole country. Northwest is also the
convergence of many unique tourism
po-tentials with typical characteristics of the
country and people of Vietnam. This is an
important feature attracting tourists,
espe-cially international ones.

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tourism activities generally and
commu-nity-based tourism (CBT) particularly
in the Northwest have seen much
pros-perity, refl ected in the growth of tourism
development index, tourism products and
tourism infrastructure. It can be aﬃ rmed
that CBT development in the Northwest

recently has had many positive impacts,
contributing to the economy of the local
people.

However, apart from the above
achievements, CBT development in the
Northwest has also revealed some
lim-itations, such as: little conservation and
promotion of indigenous cultural values
together with exploitation for tourism
activities. Many Northwestern products
CBT products are so similar with few
highlights to express the unique
identi-ty of the local communiidenti-ty, making them
less attractive to tourists. CBT sites
have relatively similar operating
mod-els, developed on the basis of replication
of previous pilot ones. The inheritance
and lessons learned from the previous
models help them develop more,
how-ever, many places are still stereotyped,
not paying enough attention to working
on surveys and assessing the current
status of local tourism potential. In
ad-dition, the environmental conditions in
many CBT sites are not good enough to
receive tourists, especially those from
developed countries.

The cause of the above-mentioned

limitations can be both objective and
subjective. The former may include:
poor accessibility to tourist
destina-tions, lack of supportive policies from
the State. This has been also shown in
many domestic and international studies

for the Northwest and areas with
sim-ilar conditions [10-14]. The latter may
include: lack of strategic development
for the whole region, inadequate
aware-ness of CBT leading to incorrect policy
planning. Other reasons have also been
identifi ed such as: lack of researches to
discover the typical ethnic cultural
iden-tity of the locality to build CBT
prod-ucts, poor tourism resource protection -
an important factor for building tourism
products, imbalance in the development
of economy and tourism, no adequate
support from the State in propaganda,
promotion and training human resources
in CBT activities, etc.

In general, most of the above
rea-sons are closely related to the role of state
management on CBT in the region. Up
to now, although there have been many
studies related to CBT development in
Northwest [1, 2, 8], there have not been

any studies nationally or internationally
about state management on CBT in the
region. This study focuses on assessing
the role and responsibility of state
man-agement for CBT development,
analyz-ing the successes and limitations as well
as proposing solutions to improve the
state management for CBT development
in some Northwestern provinces (Hoa
Binh, Son La, and Dien Bien).

2. Theoretical background, data 
and research methodology

* Theoretical background:

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exploited by the community, and bringing
them benefi ts (Tourism Law 2017)

Many studies on CBT have shown
that CBT sustainable development
re-quires the participation of all
stakehold-ers, in which the state plays an important
role. The State is the main subject in the
process of planning and implementing
strategies, plans, policies and laws on
tourism development in general and CBT
development in particular.

In this study, the state

manage-ment for CBT developmanage-ment is regarded
as the process in which the state uses
its management tools to infl uence CBT
development to achieve the tourism
de-velopment goals. State management for
CBT development includes: Developing
and implementing strategies, planning,
making plans for CBT development;
Issuing and implementing policies on
CBT development; Developing CBT
hu-man resource; State hu-management units
for CBT, etc.

* Data and research methodology
Data sources for this research
in-clude secondary data and primary one.
The former includes documents, reports,
proposals, projects, statistics, etc.
relat-ed to CBT development in tourism state
management agencies at state and
provin-cial level.

The latter was collected through the
surveys conducted with CBT experts,
lo-cal communities and tourists, including:
current traﬃ c infrastructure, tourism
re-sources tourism human rere-sources,
tour-ism promotion, tourtour-ism environment,
local support policies for those involved
in CBT development, specifi c and overall

assessment of state management activities
on CBT development.

The questionnaires used were
de-signed in printed forms and online ones.
The survey started from March 2020, and
by the end of July 2020, 450 responses
had been collected from tourists, of which
400 responses from Hoa Binh, 288 from
Son La and 207 from Dien Bien (each
guest could make multiple selections). At
that time, Vietnam did not welcome any
international visitors due to Covid-19, so
all respondents were domestic tourists.
By the end of July 2020, 115 responses
had been collected from experts, 120 from
local communities (50 in Hoa Binh, 50 in
Son La and 20 in Dien Bien).

3. State management activities for 
CBT development in some 
Northwest-ern provinces

3.1. An overview of CBT 
develop-ment in some Northwestern provinces

With the advantage of natural
con-ditions and diversifi ed customs of ethnic
groups, CBT is paid much attention to

fur-ther develop in Northwestern provinces.
As of 2019, the total number of CBT sites
in Hoa Binh, Son La and Dien Bien was 42
(Hoa Binh: 22, Son La: 10 and Dien Bien:
10); the total number of households
par-ticipating in CBT activities was 290 (Hoa
Binh: 174, Son La: 63 and Dien Bien: 53).
Some typical sites are Giang Mo, Van
village, Lac village, Tong village, Ai
lage (Hoa Binh), Hua Tat village, Bo
vil-lage, Hum vilvil-lage, Ngoc Chien (Son La),
Noong Bua, Co Mỵ, Ten, Uva, Pe Luong,
Phieng Lơi, Him Lam 2 (Dien Bien).

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Accordingly, it brings income for the
com-munity and contributes to the growth of
the locality’s total tourism revenue.
Ac-cording to reports from localities, the total
revenue from CBT of Hoa Binh in 2019
was 415 billion VND (accounting for 20%
of the province’s total tourism revenue)
with an average increase of about 30%/
year from 2015 to 2019. In other
locali-ties, there was also an increase in visitors,
revenue and employees related to CBT
(see table 1).

I n general, the Northwest has been
exploiting its strengths to develop CBT.
The number of visitors to CBT villages

gradually increases. CBT has contributed

to hunger eradication and poverty
reduc-tion, creating new livelihoods for upland
people. However, besides these
achieve-ments, the development of CBT has also
revealed certain limitations, related to
the quality of tourism products,
environ-mental sanitation in CBT sites, human
resources quality, etc. The survey shows
that the importance of natural
environ-mental factors (wastewater, waste, etc.) is
assessed at 4.2/5, while the real value is
assessed at about 3.5/5 in 3 provinces; The
knowledge and skills of people
participat-ing in tourism activities are
underestimat-ed (Hoa Binh: 3.44/5, Son La: 3.3/5 and
Dien Bien: 3.1/5)

Table 1- Number of visitors and revenue from CBT in some Northwestern provinces, 
2015-2019

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With the above limitations, in
gen-eral, the satisfaction of tourists in 3
prov-inces is not high (Hoa Binh: 3.72/5; Son
La: 3.69/5 and Dien Bien: 3.56/5).

The positive aspects, limitations and
unsustainable images of CBT
develop-ment develop-mentioned above are to some extent

the results of state management for CBT
development, which are specifi cally
con-sidered in the following part.

3.2. Analysis of state management 
for CBT development in some 
North-western provinces of Vietnam

- Developing and implementing 
plans, and planning related CBT in the 
provinces

In Northwestern provinces, things
related to CBT development are often
in-corporated in the local tourism
develop-ment planning. Up to now, all 3 provinces
of Hoa Binh, Son La and Dien Bien have
had master plans for tourism
develop-ment. These plans play important roles in
orienting tourism development in
locali-ties [3-6].

In 2014, Hoa Binh had “Master plan
for tourism development in Hoa Binh
province for the period of 2014-2020,
with a vision to 2030”. The plan was
ap-proved according to Decision No. 2060/
QD-UBND dated 11 December 2014. One
of the tourism development perspectives
given in the plan is to focus on developing

cultural tourism, eﬀ ectively exploiting the 
values of cultural heritages and cultural 
identities of ethnic groups, particularly 
Muong to improve the specifi city and 
orig-inality of tourism products. This is 
consid-ered as one of the important orientations
for CBT development in Hoa Binh. The

content for CBT development is shown in
the plan, such as: Preserving the hamlets
and villages with unique cultural
identi-ties of ethnic groups in Hoa Binh province
to develop tourism products; Selecting
suitable hamlets and villages to receive
tourists, generating stable income for
lo-cal people.

On the basis of the approved plans,
Hoa Binh has developed and implemented
specifi c plans. Up to now, 100% of
dis-tricts and cities have approved and
im-plemented the local tourism development
project to 2020, with a vision to 2030. The
plan of developing Mai Chau national
tourist destination in year 2030 was
ap-proved according to Decision No. 1728 /
QD-UBND dated July 4, 2016).

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In 2008, Dien Bien had a Master
plan for tourism development in Dien

Bien province until 2020 (Decision No.
150/ QD-UBND dated January 30, 2008).
For more than 10 years, there has not been
any modifi cations or new master plans.
The limitation in this plan is excluding
specifi c contents or goals for CBT
devel-opment. However, to orient the province’s
tourism development, Dien Bien issued
the resolution and tourism development
program to 2020, vision to 2030 Those
documents mention CBT development,
such as proposing mechanisms to support
and encourage CBT; building high quality
cultural villages to welcome tourists. Since
2015, Dien Bien has received 13 projects
for tourism development in general and
CBT in particular with a total capital of
71 billion VND, of which about 40 billion
VND is for infrastructure investment.

Master plans and tourism
devel-opment plans in localities show the

ac-tiveness of the local government in state
management. Planning is an eﬀ ective
management tool in managing, investing
and controlling tourism development
ac-tivities. However, generally the content of
tourism planning has not focused on
spec-ifying objectives and orientation for CBT

development to promote the advantages
of each locality. The classifi cation among
strategies - planning-plans has not been
clearly stated leading to overlapping
im-plementation or incompatibility,
especial-ly in the fi eld of tourism investment.

For experts, regarding developing
and implementing projects and plans
re-lated to CBT development in localities
(Figure 1), it shows that the highest scores
fall to A, B, D in Hoa Binh, which are
not at a good level. Besides, all 7 related
content in Hoa Binh receive higher points
than the 2 localities.

Figure 1 - Building and implementing projects and plans related to CBT development in 
some Northwestern provinces

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- Implementing CBT development
policies

In order to promote CBT
develop-ment, Northwestern provinces have actively
issued policies, which are present in
resolu-tions. Accordingly, apart from indirect
poli-cies related to assisting tourism development
including CBT (infrastructure, promotion,
etc.). The resolutions emphasize legal
sup-port for CBT development to improve the

living standard of ethnic minorities in the
provinces.

Concreting the resolutions, CBT
development policies in Son La province
were issued under resolution No. 22/2016/
NQ-HDND dated December 14, 2016 of
the Provincial People’s Committee to fund
CBT villages and households. As of
De-cember 2019, Son La had assisted 7 CBT
villages and 23 CBT households. This
ex-hibits the province’s eﬀ orts towards CBT
development. However, after 3 years of
de-ployment, the disbursement was only 600
million VND, equal to 10% of local
peo-ple’s needs. The number of supported
vil-lages and households is limited,
account-ing for about 25% of those oriented to CBT
development in the planning. According to
Son La Department of Culture, Sports and
Tourism [7], the main reason comes from
low and insuﬃ cient support, which is hard
for the locals to implement the prescribed
items, making it less attractive to the locals.
The disbursement procedure is so
compli-cated, and time - consuming, making it
hard for villages and households to access
loans.

In Dien Bien, CBT development

policy was given in the Decision No.
1128/QD-UBND dated 20 September
2010 on approval of the proposal

“Build-ing the ethnic cultural village to develop
Dien Bien tourism” in 2015. Accordingly,
10 villages are invested, and 8 villages are
upgraded to welcome tourists. The
invest-ment aims at building capability to receive
tourists. The total investment is 11 billion
VND, among which 415 million VND
is for tourism products promotion. After
the implementation period (2010-2015),
those policies have generally helped
de-velop CBT and thereby improve local
people’s living standards, contributing to
the preservation of ethnic cultural values.
The proposal “Preserving and developing
the culture of ethnic minorities in Dien
Bien associated with socio-economic
de-velopment from 2016 to 2020, orientated
to 2025” provides support in
conserva-tion for 03 - 05 tradiconserva-tional ethnic cultural
tourism villages. However, due to the lack
of resources, many villages have no
lon-ger received tourists with degradation of
equipment, infrastructure while the
reve-nue from tourism is not enough to make
it up.

Hoa Binh has not issued any
specif-ic polspecif-icies directly related to CBT
devel-opment. However, support has been done
regularly (for musical performance teams
and CBT households). This support has
made it easier for CBT households to
con-serve, and promote the value of Muong
culture and develop CBT.

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Research on state management for community-based tourism development in some Northwestern provinces of Vietnam - Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Thực phẩm Tp. Hồ Chí Minh

<b>RESEARCH ON STATE MANAGEMENT </b>

<b>FOR COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT </b>

<b>IN SOME NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES OF VIETNAM</b>

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