Indian tourists are a special group that Vietnam focuses on.
As noted by Sentence, currently there are 2 streams of opinion about Indian tourists. For tourism experts, Indian tourists are a potential group with high purchasing power, which could replace Chinese and Russian tourists. However, service staff sometimes find it difficult to satisfy this group of tourists.
Difficult Indian tourists?
If you search for the keyword “Indian tourists” in hotel groups, you can easily find many funny stories shared by people in the industry. Most concluded that this is a rather troublesome group of tourists.
Tran Son Tung, a former manager of a major hotel in Hanoi, admits that Indian tourists have their own cultural characteristics. This sometimes makes service workers in Vietnam “a little tired”.
From personal experience, Tung discovered that this group of customers often asks a lot, for example for discounts, free services,… Therefore, service employees must understand their psychology to get the best treatment.
India is a potential customer group but has many unique features. Photo: Aravind Kumar.
“I see that as the general pattern of most Indian tourists in Vietnam. Of course there are also exceptions. They are more polite and tactful,” he said.
Tung’s experience working with Indian tourists is to always be careful in communication. He advised “people in the industry” to keep their minds of steel, not to let them “manipulate psychology”. For example, if guests want to get more than they paid for, prevent them from the start so they don’t have high expectations.
According to the former manager of this hotel, service people should know how to treat tourists. However, with each guest, they also need to know the balance between “dimensional” and “tough”.
He added: “They really enjoy asking, but not being able to ask doesn’t make it difficult for us. I see many service people also complain about serving Indian tourists. However, everything is not too negative. It’s like a funny story of people in the industry.
She should understand
Zing also had a conversation with Mr. Phung Quang Thang, president of the Hanoi Travel Association on the thoughts of people working in the service industry on Indian tourists.
Mr Thang said that each market has different segments. The mass market segment is the most popular. Next is the affluent group, VIP with fewer numbers. Many establishments only accept mass tourists, not experienced with first class tourists in India.
In addition, the difference between rich and poor in India is quite large. Therefore, even in the same market, Indian customers also have this person, that person. However, Mr Thang stressed that this is still a potential market with billions of people. The problem lies in how Vietnam will exploit this market.
The group of super-rich tourists in India has been targeted by Vietnam. Photo: SKM.
“Actually, each hotel focuses on a group of tourists who are suitable in terms of facilities and means of communication. Most units only accept masses and don’t really understand them. Remember, there are still relatively few Indian visitors to Vietnam before 2019,” he shared.
Understanding the customer is important. Because they have not really had much contact with this group of customers, many service people are still surprised. However, currently Russian tourists are unable to return much due to political issues. Chinese tourists are again hit by the anti-epidemic policy. In this context, India is still regarded as an important source of supply for Vietnam’s tourism market.
In order to understand and welcome more Indian visitors, Mr. Thang that travel companies and places should also focus on training and increasing the knowledge of human resources. We need to understand their culture and personality before we want to attract this group of visitors to Vietnam.
According to a representative of the Hanoi Travel Association, the essence of tourism is cultural exchange. We must respect the cultural issues of foreign tourists – in this case Indian tourists.
“The parties need to step up their efforts to support and train human resources in the industry in welcoming a new customer market such as India. We respect them. They will respect us and come to us,” said Mr. Thang.
@ Zing News
