The Vietnam National Administration for Tourism (VNAT) disagrees with the Hanoi People’s Committee’s proposal of hiring foreigners as tour guides to overcome the shortage of Korean and Japanese speakers. 

Administration leader Vo Thi Thang said foreigners could not thoroughly understand the history, culture and people of Vietnam. “Moreover, in many cases we cannot control what foreign tour guides would tell visitors,” Thang said.

She also emphasized the Tourism Law, which will come into effect Jan. 1, 2006, also requires tour guides to be of Vietnamese nationality and permanently reside here.

Some travel agencies in Hanoi have recently broken the law by hiring Korean and Japanese as tour guides to meet the increase of tourist arrivals from Japan and Republic of Korea.

Regarding the problem, Thang said it was due to weak management of the tourism sector and VNAT would work to punish those who fell outside the law.

“VNAT is working with relevant agencies from Japan and the Republic of Korea to organize short-term courses in Japanese and Korean to meet the demand,” Thang said.

Vietnam received more than 3.4 million foreign visitors in 2005, of which 600,000 were from South Korea and Japan.

But only 5% of Vietnamese tour guides speak Japanese and far fewer, Korean, according to a recent survey by VNAT.

Source: VNE – Compiled by Thu Thuy