This is an interview with Dr Nuno F. Ribeiro, Associate Professor, International Tourism & Hospitality Management at Copenhagen Business College, formerly of RMIT Vietnam.
It covers:
- Airline capacity decisions, and why travel demand tends to shift rather than collapse during economic downturns.
- Vietnam’s reliance on regional markets like China, South Korea and India, alongside signs of caution in investment and domestic tourism.
- Compares Vietnam’s growth-focused model with Denmark’s value-driven tourism strategy, including differences in workforce development, salaries, and talent retention.
- Sustainability, with insights into enforcement, carrying capacity, and lessons from Denmark’s policy-led approach.
Video
Audio
Transcript
BARNES: Are you happy for me to record?
RIBEIRO: Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, by all means.
BARNES: All right. Fantastic. Cool. So yeah, I guess firstly, what sort of big changes have you been seeing in the tourism industry off the back of the conflict in the Middle East, right?
RIBEIRO: The first is sort of an instability in the markets, right?
But that has happened in just about any economic activity.
But one thing to remember, and I realise, Mark, I am preaching to the choir here, right?
But you know this already, just in case your readers or our viewers or whatever the case may be do not know, tourism is one of the few what we call transversal economic activities, meaning that a change in overall economic outlook impacts tourism and vice versa.
So if there is a change in tourism, especially in a country like Vietnam, where we have closer to 9 to 10 percent of its GDP tourism-related.
So it is a big deal.
So the first one that we saw was an instability in capital, right?
So you have, as you know, a variety of projects that are underway in Vietnam when it comes to hotel construction, hotel planning and so forth.
And so it may put capital on hold or it may spur capital.
That is the first one.
The second has to do with the fact that Vietnam is energy dependent, right?
As you know, but that impacts Vietnam’s tourism industry in two ways.
First, it may make long-haul flights more expensive and thus we may see a contraction in demand for Vietnam tourism from further away destinations.
We have not seen, and again I have been following this, anything major so far.
I have not seen anything major.
That being said, we are seeing a contraction when it comes to domestic tourism.
So what most countries have been doing is to invest a little bit more in nearby destinations.
In the case of Vietnam, the usual suspects, right?
You have China, you have South Korea, you have now India as the main emitting markets towards Vietnam.
Those are not going to be massively impacted by whatever oil pressures we may see in the near future.
But we are seeing some caution from Vietnamese authorities.
I think, in regard to energy and fuel conservation, no one really knows how long this will take and of course again this is not the only way to get energy and oil into Vietnam, there are a variety of others, but we are seeing some caution.
That is the main thing that I have noticed, right?
People are not so bullish when it comes to investment.
The second is that we may see a slight retraction, for example, from European tourism for the exact same reasons.
So markets, say from northern Europe, France, Germany, may retract slightly, not just towards Vietnam but towards the whole Southeast Asia region.
And third, Vietnam’s tourism industry is fairly dependent on a variety of end-user products that are not manufactured in Vietnam.
I am talking, for example, about hardware that Vietnam imports, even some things such as furniture that is specific to the hotel industry, and those products may see an increase in their price due to the current events in the Strait of Hormuz.
I have not seen anything major yet.
Now on the very positive side, and again Mark, preaching to the choir because I follow you, so I am telling you something that you told me, Vietnam bamboo.
I follow the-shiv religiously.
Vietnam’s bamboo diplomacy has in all effects assured that Vietnam will not feel the impacts of an oil recession more so than other countries.
Right?
Vietnam’s relationships with Russia, Vietnam’s relationships with the United States and with China have basically ensured that, while constrained, there will be a steady supply of energy, meaning oil, towards Vietnam.
Now, where that will go, I think it is up for debate, up for discussion, but I really have not seen any major dramatic impacts in so far as the Vietnamese industry is concerned.
BARNES: I guess what I wonder about is jet fuel prices. And I think that Vietjet and Vietnam Airlines bring a lot of tourists into Vietnam.
RIBEIRO: They do.
BARNES: I would argue that is probably one of their key functions —
RIBEIRO: Probably the most visible for sure.
BARNES: And so, therefore, I wonder, do you think that if jet fuel prices increase and they cannot run as many flights, we are going to see action?
RIBEIRO: That is a great question.
Now, I have only seen one or two airlines, one of them was Delta Air Lines, the other was Lufthansa, actually publicly announce that they are reducing the number of flights.
Airlines are incredibly cautious about doing so because they know that losing any market share in the short term, for whatever reasons, plausible as they may be, will in all likelihood ensure a longer-term loss in market share.
So I think they may be cautious.
They may think, how long is this actually going to last?
Because there are other ways of moving oil around the world.
And again, one thing to recall is that most countries where these airlines are based have vast reservoirs of oil.
So you may see countries dip into those reserves or contact strategic partners in the Middle East to release a few more million barrels of oil to face these short-term pressures.
Now, are we still going to see four and five flights every day within the same destination?
Maybe not.
But the crucial flights, I think, will remain.
I have yet to see, other than those two examples I cited, any flagship carriers announcing in public that they are cutting flight frequency again because that carries a series of marketing and market share implications.
In so far as Vietnam specifically is concerned, again, Vietnam is quite clever when it comes to energy production and consumption.
They have huge reserves of crude, and while Vietjet is a private company, both Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet do have the possibility to tap into those reserves.
So I do not see anything major occurring in the next couple of months.
Now, should this instability increase or expand to other areas of the globe, then maybe you will see changes, but I think that will come from a government directive almost certainly.
BARNES: Okay. And so, do you see a difference then between low-end and high-end travellers?
RIBEIRO: We do.
We are seeing that, as almost always, higher-end travellers, luxury travel, is almost immune to economic shocks.
And so far these shocks have been fairly mild in the grand scheme of things if we look at the number, frequency, and magnitude of economic crises since World War II.
This one is fairly benign, with a lot of quotation marks around it.
This is not the 1973 OPEC oil shock, right?
That just stopped the world.
But we are seeing almost no change in the upper end of the market.
And we are seeing a geographic contraction at the low end of the market.
Meaning, are people still travelling?
Yes.
And again, once more, preaching to the choir.
But whenever there is less money or less discretionary income, people do not stop travelling.
They just travel to other places or they will travel with lesser frequency.
What typically happens, and we are seeing a little bit of that thus far, is that people will tend to extend their holiday.
Instead of taking multiple trips during the year, they will take fewer trips but longer ones because that is more cost-effective.
So, for example, instead of me going to Quy Nhon, Hoi An, Hanoi, Da Nang within the same six months, I might just go to Hoi An and Da Nang and stay a little bit longer because one of the big costs of the trip would be transportation.
So if that transportation increases, I might as well stay maybe a couple more days in the destination and still enjoy the 15 or 20 days of vacation days that I have in a year.
Does that make sense, Mark?
BARNES: Yeah. Yeah, totally. So I guess we are talking about increased fuel costs. I am thinking about consumer spending falling off as a result of inflation in more developed markets. So I kind of get what you are saying, people are staying in one place for longer rather than using transport a lot less. But I am also thinking they would be spending less simply because prices are going up.
RIBEIRO: Probably.
Tourism and travel are one of the most fascinating products.
It is a non-essential product, right?
You do not need to buy it to survive.
It is not like paying rent or buying milk or groceries or anything like that.
But there is something called the tourism leisure paradox.
So it appears that the more seasoned you become as a traveller, the more important travel and tourism become in your overall spending habits.
So it is very rare to see people stopping travel altogether.
And we have been studying this for 30 years or something.
And no one really knows how to explain this, but the fact of the matter is, you will still travel.
Now it will be, you pile all the kids in the car and off you go to see the grandparents, or you will take shorter-haul flights to just one destination and stay there in a nice bed and breakfast that is not so expensive.
We do not really know, but people will still continue to travel.
Every single economic shock that we have had since 1952 until the present has shown evidence of this, with the big exception being COVID, but the borders were closed and movement was actually restricted.
So absent those events, say a pandemic when movement is actually restricted, you will still see travel.
It is the nature and type of that travel that we are seeing changes in, and that is really interesting.
I am not quite sure in Vietnam, given that so many families use diesel as part of their means of energy to fuel their transportation, how that is going to be impacted.
I have seen prices increase slightly in Vietnam.
You have seen, obviously, long lines to fill our motorbikes at the petrol station, but I have not really seen, at least looking at the latest statistics, a drastic reduction in the number of domestic trips taken by Vietnamese.
And that is the majority of the market.
So I think there is a cautious approach to how long this crisis will last and how its impacts will be.
But again, to drive the point further, people will still continue to travel.
BARNES: Sure.
RIBEIRO: It is more the nature of that travel, and we are expecting to see how it is going to change.
BARNES: Sure. And so I wonder, from a human resources perspective, then, you were training a lot of these kids who are now working in the industry.
RIBEIRO: Very much so. Yeah. Yeah.
BARNES: I wonder what they are saying. Are they struggling? Are they fine? Are they worried?
RIBEIRO: It is so interesting because I have found so many parallels.
I am in Denmark now, and you would think that it would be a completely different system, and in some cases it is.
But when it comes to human resources, there are a lot of the same issues, where you have a large pool of young people, very talented, very bright, who go into the industry very strong, and once they look at prospective salaries upon entry, or they see how difficult the first two years are, they say, “Oh, well, hang on a second, maybe I can do something else.”
So in Vietnam we have a huge pool of talent, but only a small percentage stays in the industry two years post-graduation.
I am looking very closely at the educational market when it comes to tourism and hospitality, and we are now seeing almost a doubling in offerings in the last five years from Vietnamese educational institutes.
So both countries have a very strong tradition when it comes to vocational training.
So, for example, you are finishing your high school and instead of going to your traditional three-, four-, or five-year university degree, you may want to get a two- or three-year degree that is closely intertwined with industry and basically guarantees you a job at the end of that training.
What we would call, Mark, I am not sure if you have those in Australia, but an associate degree, is that something?
BARNES: Yeah.
RIBEIRO: Okay. So it would be around two years. Same thing here as in Denmark. And so you have a lot of young people entering the industry, but the salaries are still not competitive. Same as Vietnam.
BARNES: Yeah. Sorry, just on that.
RIBEIRO: Go on.
BARNES: Keep going.
RIBEIRO: Sorry.
BARNES: Please, please, please go.
RIBEIRO: No, I was just going to say, just on that, the salaries are not competitive.
BARNES: I was wondering about that. You are a teacher at RMIT. RMIT is quite expensive.
RIBEIRO: Very much so.
BARNES: I wonder if a lot of those students getting out of that degree would be able to find positions in hospitality that pay enough to make it worthwhile.
RIBEIRO: It depends.
It depends on what type of positions and which area within tourism and hospitality they are focusing on.
So with tourism being this massive umbrella, right?
But for example, students who are interested in finance within the hospitality realm, hospitality analytics, those have no shortage of well-paid jobs because, as you know, the pipeline for middle and upper management when it comes to those areas is still small in Vietnam.
We still import a lot of foreigners to train the Vietnamese workforce.
When it comes to food and beverage, that tends to absorb the majority of the graduates, then salaries are still very, very small.
And so that is what you see.
No matter how passionate students may be, within two years, with such a heavy workload and low pay, a lot of them exit the industry.
And they take those skills that they have learned in tourism and hospitality, namely customer service skills and analysis skills, and they will transfer them to another industry.
The greatest absorption tends to be either marketing or real estate, where they can make, in some cases, twice or triple what they can make in tourism and hospitality.
No difference in Denmark.
It is exactly the same thing when it comes to the student population.
BARNES: Sure, that makes sense. I just wonder, as far as tourism products go, in my limited experience, I know there is the high-end there obviously in Vietnam, but I feel like most of it is probably lower end, lower to mid.
RIBEIRO: Hotels and things, it really depends.
So the difference in the markets is that Vietnam is very much a country in its growth stages, right?
If you look at this model, Vietnam is still an emerging tourism destination, whereas Denmark is a very mature destination.
So Vietnam, up until now, has bet on growth, whereas Denmark has bet on value.
They try, while they get fewer tourists, to extract as much value from those tourists as possible.
Whereas Vietnam’s bet has still been on numbers, on growth, especially of international tourists.
And so because the market is much wider in Vietnam, you have the whole gamut, right?
You have the very, very, very high end of luxury where they pay extremely well.
You have the high-end international hospitality corporations that are putting their footprint in Vietnam and driving standards, and yes, the salaries are very competitive.
That being said, between 70 and 75 percent of hospitality in Vietnam is still family-owned.
In there, salaries are extremely low, right?
And typically, you have small family affairs that are run by an entire or a couple of families together.
And there, for a young person who has just gotten a highly specialised degree from a university, naturally they are going to feel, I can do more than this, right?
And so they will move to other areas and to other places for sure.
BARNES: Okay, cool. All right, man. Look, that is plenty for me. Did you have anything else you wanted to add?
RIBEIRO: Maybe a couple of things.
The comparison is really interesting between Denmark and Vietnam.
So, just to give you a couple of figures.
Denmark’s tourism footprint is less than 2 percent of its GDP.
The latest figures from 2025 are 1.8 percent.
For Vietnam, it is closer to 10 percent.
So it is 9.7 percent.
This is according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.
So completely different stories, right?
For Vietnam, tourism is a strategic sector of the economy.
For Denmark, less so.
We have already spoken about workforce and especially industry needs at the entry level.
It is at the management level that is really interesting.
Denmark has no shortage of competent and highly educated hospitality managers at the very high end with strong analytical skills.
Vietnam needs a couple more years to get there.
And what they have typically done is they have imported foreign managers who then try to train the workforce.
But now, just to touch base on the last point, in the last five years you now have lots of Vietnamese universities forming what is going to be the new generation of hotel managers, especially in the high-end international chains that have a significant footprint in Vietnam.
It used to be that the general manager in most high-end hotels, five stars, four stars and above, oftentimes was not Vietnamese, but now it is.
And I think that tendency is likely to increase.
Yet it is still very difficult to convince a young person to stay in the industry after finishing their degree and entering the hospitality industry in Denmark, just as it is in Vietnam.
Now the vocational pathway is perhaps a little bit more developed.
They follow something similar to the German model, meaning that you do a succession of internships throughout your degree.
So, for example, you may study three days a week and the other two days you are working at that company that in all likelihood is going to absorb you once your degree is completed.
That is very, very good, perhaps something to look at.
The most interesting one is the approach and attitude towards sustainability that remains, unfortunately, the Achilles’ heel of the Vietnamese tourism industry.
And we have spoken, I think everyone has spoken, to this at such great length, right?
I am not going to say anything particularly new.
Maybe just a couple of minutes on a comparison.
You think only change will happen when mentalities change or when culture changes.
Look at the Nordic countries.
I am like, “Oh, hang on there, buddy. It is a little bit more complicated and simpler than this.”
The reason why things changed here is because it is part of the law.
You cannot not be sustainable.
It is not a matter of everyone thinking sustainably and recycling because they think it is important for the planet.
Let’s be realistic.
People are going to recycle because if you don’t, there are incredibly hefty fines.
And the same thing applies for sustainability practices within the hotel industry.
Denmark has had maybe 30 years to implement these sustainability practices.
Yes, there was a societal consensus around it.
There was an initial stage where, rather than punitive, such measures were designed to reward.
For example, if you did recycle or implement sustainability practices in your hotel, you would get a reward, namely a taxation break.
But after a while, once more or less the system was in place, you have to be sustainable because if you are not, it is going to cost you money.
And I am wondering if Vietnam may want to take a look at examples such as Denmark and think about it.
I like to say that Vietnam is legislation light and bureaucracy heavy.
Denmark is the opposite.
Denmark is bureaucracy light but legislation heavy.
And when it comes to tourism and hospitality, and sustainability practices within tourism and hospitality, that is a perfect example.
The law is very clear, and if you do not follow it, there is a huge penalty.
So there is every interest in the world for Danish hotel and tourism managers to follow those practices.
What they have done very cleverly is turn it into one of their marketing strong points.
They have collaborated with the Danish DMOs, namely the three big ones, Wonderful Copenhagen, Visit Denmark, and Discover Denmark, and said, look, come visit us and look at these sustainability practices.
And I will give you just one called Copen.
For a variety of attractions in the city of Copenhagen, in the capital, if you prove you have done something sustainable during your stay, you will get a discount.
For example, if you walk or ride your bike to the National Museum, your entrance has a discounted fee.
And that is a great marketing tool.
I will send you some videos that are really, really interesting.
So, again, my main point here is they are not being sustainable just because or because they think it is important.
While they do, they are doing so because it has been legislated as such.
And so, again, I am wondering if it might be worth looking into.
BARNES: Sure. And I totally get what you are saying and I agree with you. I just wonder how you would do this in a Vietnam context because I would argue enforcement is the issue, right? You can have all of the laws in the world that you want, but if you are not going to enforce them, they become redundant.
RIBEIRO: Vietnam has actually been a pioneer.
I may be dating myself here, Mark, you are a much younger man than I am.
But Vietnam has actually been a pioneer in piloting some of these schemes.
So back in the 1980s, 1984 and 1985, Vietnam received a very hefty grant from UNESCO to pilot Hoi An as a sustainable tourism destination.
And what they did is calculate what the capacity of the destination was and put those little gates in place, and you have to buy a ticket.
There was a limited number of people that could enter Hoi An at a given time on a given day.
It was very, very successful for 10 years until the next economic crisis, and people said, okay, we need to open this up so that more people can have jobs.
But for a case like Vietnam, you probably would not be successful if you were to do blanket legislation and enforcement.
It would not work.
It has been tried before many times.
What might work is to select one or two key destinations and implement it there.
Wait a couple of years, verify and document its success, and then move from there to other destinations.
It did work in the past, briefly.
BARNES: And so, the other issue I would raise is whether there is the will to do that. I look at Ha Long Bay, for example. When I first got to Vietnam in 2019, it was a mess.
RIBEIRO: I am not sure what it will take.
I am not sure if civil society in general understands that these resources are finite.
There comes a point when it tilts.
Any tourism attraction, any tourism destination, has a breaking point.
Ha Long Bay is the perfect case where we are almost there at the point where the damage might be irreversible.
If you were to do like Thailand did, where they closed Koh Phi Phi Island for tourists for, I think, a year, give or take, it may take some draconian measures to recover that.
Now, for that to happen, there needs to be an immense educational effort, not just at the government and civil society level but on the visitor level as well.
Right?
So you have these three vectors that you have to sensitise.
Look, Vietnam has these amazing, incredible resources that they do not have anywhere else in the world, but they really need to be protected.
And that means enforcement of capacity issues.
So you would have civil society, you would have government, and you would have visitors.
That is really hard to do.
It is a big country, 118 million people, very complex, as you know.
So, yeah.
BARNES: Well, then I wonder what you think about the tourism target numbers that come out every year. I am talking about not what they achieve, but what they aim to achieve. I know this year it is 25 million after 21 million last year. This is a big increase. You are talking about, what is that, a 10 to 15 percent increase in tourist numbers.
RIBEIRO: I can see the purpose of it as a motivational tool, right?
But what I would love to see is those numbers beautifully distributed geographically so they do not cause excessive impact on a single or a handful of destinations.
And I would also love to see a few carrying capacity studies so that we get to a point where we have a definite number, or at least an approximation, of how many tourists, be it international or domestic.
And I am assuming you are referring to those 21 million as international tourists, right?
BARNES: Yeah.
RIBEIRO: Now, okay, we always need to add the domestic tourists.
And so we are getting very, very close to 300 million trips in a year.
That should give us pause.
So the rule of thumb is whenever the number of tourist trips is the same as or higher than the number of local inhabitants, and Vietnam has around 117 to 120 million inhabitants, that is when people like me in tourism management and DMO roles urge caution and say, do we really need this many?
Can we put a moratorium on this?
Can we look more closely, and again can we look very closely, at the domestic market?
It is understandable that Vietnam wants to bet on the international market because they spend more, right?
If Vietnam is going to transition from an emerging destination to a more mature one, typically the metrics go from growth to value, much like Denmark has done in the past.
But again, I have to confess I have not really seen any major studies at the national level that answer the basic question of how many tourists are enough.
You have a few scholars, I think, a few folks in the industry, who are already calling attention to places such as Ha Long Bay, Hoi An, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and Nha Trang, who are asking for development, but to do so sustainably.
But again, I have not seen any actual figures for how many.
BARNES: So let me ask you, if you could do just one thing, right? You were there for six years in Vietnam working in the tourism industry. If you could do just one thing to get it on track. What would you do?
RIBEIRO: Other than supporting my students, because I would not be worth my salt as an educator if I did not say that, and helping them be as fulfilled in their careers and personal lives as they can be, I think I would grab the average person by the lapels and shake them so they understand how important tourism really is for Vietnam’s economy and society at large.
I do not think the average person understands what an immense force tourism is, not just economically but socially and culturally as well.
It is, again, the world’s largest industry.
I think Vietnam’s tourism contribution to its GDP is massively underestimated.
You can read the reports of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, and in very small letters at the very end, all of them agree that these numbers are likely an underestimation of the value of tourism activities towards Vietnam’s GDP.
And again, I do not think the average person understands this.
For example, if I am going to the beach and I leave a plastic bag there instead of recycling it, I am causing Vietnam a huge disservice, not just economically but socially and culturally.
So I think that would be my number one thing.
I would do my best to convince and educate the average person of the importance of tourism for Vietnam.
Again, not just economically but socially and culturally as well.
BARNES: Sure. Sure. Cool. Okay, man. Did you have anything else you wanted to say?
RIBEIRO: Nah, it was nice talking to you, man.
It was nice seeing you.
BARNES: Yeah, you too, man.