Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism (HCMC DOT)
Building a portrait of the top 10 international key markets coming to HCMC
Year: 2019
Challenge
Ho Chi Minh City is the largest tourist destination with the total number of international visitors always accounting for a high proportion compared to Vietnam. However, tourism in Ho Chi Minh City is increasingly being rivaled from other domestic and regional destinations in attracting tourists. Besides, tourism in Ho Chi Minh City also faces many challenges in extending the length of stay and increasing the spending level of tourists; thereby improving the efficiency of local tourism activities. Although it has actively implemented many new solutions for product development and communication, the tourism industry in Ho Chi Minh City has not yet achieved the expectation.
One of the reasons analyzed is the lack of information on customer profile and behaviors of the tourist market to Ho Chi Minh City, especially for the group of 10 key markets (accounting for more than 70% of the total number of visitors). That causes the proposed solutions to not meet the tourists’ needs. Therefore, building a customer profile for 10 key markets to travel to Ho Chi Minh City is identified as an important mission as the foundation for Ho Chi Minh City's longer-term strategies.
Approach
The goal was to build a complete data system on customer profiles of the top 10 important destinations for Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). Outbox's research team worked closely with HCMC DOT to conduct a survey study directly over 4000 tourists from 10 target markets, who traveled to Ho Chi Minh City at Tan Son Nhat airport in 2 consecutive months. In combination of more than 15 in-depth interviews with representatives of local travel suppliers, we determined as accurately as possible the traveler profile and travel behavior characteristics of market groups for HCMC.
Insight
Research results from visitor survey data combined with analytical information from service providers have drawn a complete portrait of the key markets of Ho Chi Minh City tourism with destination-related differentiation. Based on the market profile information, the tourism industry of Ho Chi Minh City can develop communication plans as well as provide suitable products.
