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Đặc điểm và giá trị của du lịch tôn giáo ở Việt Nam
Nguyễn Quang Minh Triết
Tóm tắt
Với sự mở rộng toàn cu của du lịch và lữ hành, ngành du lịch của Việt Nam đã phát triển
từng ngày. Nhiều loại hình du lịch mới được khám phá và mở rộng một cách bất ngờ. Trong
điều kiện hiện nay, việc thiết kế một tour du lịch đáp ứng nhu cu của khách du lịch dường như
khó hơn. Nhiều du khách không chỉ quan tâm đến những chuyến du lịch thư giãn, giải trí mà
còn đi tour với những mục đích cụ thể khác. Một trong những số đó là tour du lịch tôn giáo,
một mô hình tour mới và tiềm năng ở Việt Nam.
Từ khoá: ngành du lịch, đặc điểm, tôn giáo, tiềm năng, khách du lịch
Features and values of religious tourism in Vietnam
Abstract
With the global expansion of travel and tourism, Vietnam’s tourism industry has
developed day by day. Many new kinds of tour are discovered and extended unexpectedly.
Designing a tour which meets the demands of tourist seems more difficult in current status.
Many tourists are interested in not only relaxing or entertaining tours but also tour in other
specific purposes. One of these is religious tour which is a new and potential tour model in
Vietnam.
Key words: tourism industry, feature, religion, potential, tourist
Introduction
With a huge base of relatively undisturbed natural resources, a rich history, and a long-
established culture, Vietnam is becoming an attractive tourism destination in Asia. Not only the
numbers of foreign tourists who come to Vietnam are more and more increasing rapidly but
also the domestic tourists in Vietnam are rising considerably. Vietnam is mixed by Western and
Eastern culture, so religion in Vietnam is diversified. According to the 2014 survey of Pew
Research Center Washington D.C, most of the Vietnamese practice indigenous religions
(ancestor worship). Buddhism and Catholic are 2 important religions in Vietnam. To meet the
spiritual demand, many tourist companies have developed religous tours, especially for
Buddhist and Catholic. Although, this kind of tour has recently formed, it brings a very large
profit for tourist companies in Vietnam. Understanding the characteristics of religious tourist is
vital to comprehending the challenges for the emerging tourism industry in Vietnam.
Literature review
Tourism
In Vietnam, official definition of tourism was announced by tourism decree-law in 1999
“Tourism is the activities of human outside their usual environment to satisfy the demands for
visisting, relaxing and enjoying convalescence”. So, when connecting all of these definitions,
we can recognize that tourism just occurs when travelers have specific purposes. Each trip has
one and only one main purpose though a visitor can also undertake secondary activities
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According to Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, tourism is defined
that “tourism is the business of providing services for people who are travelling for thier
holiday”.
Religion as a concept is linked to a variety of issues in the tourism research literature,
but is most commonly mentined in relation to pilgrimage and discussions about the links
between tourism and pilgrimage. Petroman I.et al [ 3]; Richards, G. [ 5]; Tran, T. Hung et al [7]
found the characteristic features of spiritual tourism in particular regions.
Another area of research has linked religion to the relationship between the tourists (the
guests) and the local community (the hosts) or the site. Millán Vázquez de la Torre, M
Genoveva [2] found out the impacts of religious event tourism on host communities in the City
of Pietarsaari and the relationship between student behavior while on spring vacation and their
religion.
Pilgrimage
Standing on Wikipedia’s viewpoint, pilgrimage is defined that it is a journey to a shrine
or other location of important to a person’s belief and faith, although sometimes it can be a
metaphorical journey into someone’s own beliefs. Many religions attach spiritual importance
to particular places: (1) the place of birth or death of founders or saints, or (2) the place of their
“calling” or spiritual awakening, or of their connection (visual or verbal) with the divine, (3)
locations where miracles were performed or witness, (4) locations where a deity is said to live
or be “housed” or (5) any site that is seem to have special spiritual powers. Robert Stoddard [6]
stated that it was not surprising that a human activity as complex and varied as a pilgrimage
had no universally accepted definition. He also summarized that the term pilgrimage was used
in at least 3 senses. (1) There was first the “interior pilgrimage”, the “journey of the soul” in a
life time of growth from spiritual infancy to maturity. (2) There was, second, the literal
pilgrimage to some sacred place as a paradigm of the intent of religion itself. This literal journey
may be called “extroverted mysticism” (3) Finally, every trek to one’s local sanctuary was a
pilgrimage on miniature insofar as it acts out on a small scale some transition, or growth and
experience of the sacred and new community which pilgrimage in general affords. Although
two definitions are different, all of these show that pilgrimage relates to trips to specific
religious locations. It also means that people who belong to one particular religion as well as
have a desire to get experience of someone’s own belief require going on a travel. As a result,
pilgrimage can be developed into attractive tourism industry.
Religious tourism
Pilgrimage tourism has many different names such as “spiritual tourism”, “religious
tourism”, “sacred tourism” but also commonly referred to as faith tourism is a type of tourism
where people travel individually or in groups for pilgrimage, missionary, or leisure (fellow ship)
purposes from the standpoint of Wikipedia. Spiritual tourism “is completely different to the
sightseeing at places and contemplation to physical dimensions. Spiritual tourism is the visit to
the hearts and the minds of the sages at different places and especially at where existed the
abundant civilized environment” pointed out Doctor A.P.J Abdul Kalam, the former President
of India in the opening speech at the 2004 International Conclave on Buddhism and Spiritual
Tourism in India. This visit can go along with “a pilgrimage to a land that is hallowed by the
footsteps of patriarchs and prophets, a land that Christians hold in particular veneration as the
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setting for the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus”, as stated by Pope Benedict
XVI [4] when he journeyed Jerusalem. These findings from previous studies may provide some
indication of the complication of religious tourism. It has to be retained its origin and attracted
to tourists by combining with other kinds of tour at the same time. This combination will attract
to more and more tourists expand the client base and make abundant in tourism.
Features and values of religious tourism in Vietnam
Definition in Vietnam
In Vietnam, religious tourism is still unfamiliar. There are more than 44,000 destinations,
landscape, and historical heritage, half of which can be exploited the religious tourism model.
Some famous places can be listed such as Hung Temple (Phu Tho), Yen Tu Pagoda (Quang
Ninh), Bai Dinh Pagoda (Ninh Binh), Phu Day Pagoda (Nam Dinh), Tu Dam Pagoda (Hue), La
Vang Holy Land (Hue), Christ the King (Vung Tau) … Religious tourism in the world is
associated with religious activities, while it is aimed at ancestor orientation. There has not been
a fixed definition about religious tourism in Vietnam yet. When mentioning the spirit, it can be
simply related to religion such as religious festival of Huong temple (Ha Noi), Avalokitesvara
festival (Da Nang), Ponagar festival (Nha Trang), Kate festival (Ninh Thuan),etc, and
traditional festival like Hoi Giong (Ha Noi), Fishing festival (Binh Thuan), Via Ba Nui Sam
festival (Chau Doc), etc. It shows that either spiritual demands or tourism demands are the main
motivation.
When someone starts a journey and has a visit to some places where is scared in his
belief, he is known as going on a pilgrimage. In the world, every religion has own its visits to
some special places, attractions in order to contemplate, memory and worship or to some living
clergies to study or receive consultations.
Professor Do Quang Hung stated “Catholic Pilgrimage is a kind of journey to holy lands
to perform penitence and pray to God, do someone’s duty, show a token of affection, even pray
for miracle and peace [8].
History
Before 2014
Religious tourism has existed in Vietnam for a long time. There are the diversity of
religious heritages and religious, traditional festivals in whole the country. The number of
spiritual travelers has increased, making up the large density of tourists structure, especially in
domestic portion. Customers of this kind of tour usually had a faith trip combined with other
intentions. Hence it is impossible to draw a distinction between pure faith with faith-based
tourists (except for monks and nuns, clergies, Buddhists, and the followers), etc. However,
tourists only traveled individual form or in small groups before 2014, based on some tourist’s
trip diaries to religious attractions in Vietnam.
From 2014 to 2018
Religious tourism has prospered since 2014. After Lunar New Year, many tourist
companies invested to expand more routes to serve their guests. The new trait this year was that
the guest not only choose Binh Duong – Tay Ninh – Chau Doc routes but also booked North
and Central routes, Vietravel’s manager of Domestic Tourism Dinh Thu Nga said. Among 32.5
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million domestic arrivals in 2017, there was 13.5 million arrivals to religious destinations
(temple, church, sanctuary), equivalently 41.5 percent.
To have specific outlook on the status of religious tourism in Vietnam from 2014 to
2018, statistic on the number of arrivals to the guest house of Bai Dau’s nunnery in Vung Tau.
This nunnery was build in 1950s for Cai Mon Lovers of the Cross Association’s worship. Then
it was expanded to serve for the small tourist groups visits Virgin Mary of Bai Dau. Due to the
higher demands, the monastery built another building next to the old one in 2014 so as to
welcome a large number of guests.
Figure 1: The number of arrivals to guest house of Bai Dau’s nunnery in Vung Tau
(2014-2018)
Source: Board of Directors of Bai Dau’s nunnery in Vung Tau, Vietnam
Graph 1 presents the number of arrivals to guest house of Bai Dau’s nunnery in Vung Tau
from 2014 to 2018. It tends to considerably fluctuate in this period of time. For example, by
2014 the number of arrivals was almost 4.500, but just 2 years later, nearly 7.200 tourists visited
this place. This can be explained that the new one was built with capacity of 400 visitors in the
peak season. There were 2 blocks, each of which had 4 floors and 12 rooms every floor.
Moreover, there also had a community room which came to 80 people. Around the end of 2016
to 2018, the number of arrivals also rose dramatically from more than to 7.200 to nearly 12.500
due to it became more and more popular and was famous by the quality of services as well as
convenient location. Thus, it seems that Vietnamese has a tendency to stay at the religious guest
houses and the number of tourists coming to religious destinations is going up substantially.
There was also a special event which promoted religious tourism in Vietnam.
International conference on religious tourism held in Ninh Binh in 2014 which was an idea of
UNWTO General Secretary Taleb Rifai was started up after he had come to Vietnam.
According to UNWTO evaluations, spiritual tourism has a lot of developing potential,
especially Asia and Pacific including Vietnam. The best advantage of this kind of tourism are
both honoring traditional culture values and improving local life quality. This is the first time
Vietnam has organized International Religious Tourism Conference “For Sustainable
development” in Ninh Binh Province for two days, November 21 and 22. The conference in the
northern province of Ninh Binh with 300 local and foreign representatives focuses on religious
tourism as the highly potential tourism segment in Vietnam, according to the tourism ministry.
4500
6750 7200
11300
12500
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
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With the huge quantity of cultural, historical heritages, Vietnam has acknowledged and
evaluated highly the potential religious tourism development. However, making best use of this
potential, benefit contribution at local level, resident’s improving income, heritage conversation
are not easy issues. At the event, State officials, companies and tourism researchers discussed
related contents on planning, management, preservation and exploitation and development of
tourism associated with religious activities. It is expected that the contents on management and
sustainable development of religious tourist attractions, the trend of tourism product
development in combination with experiences of many nations in developing this kind of
tourism activity will bring a new view for the country to develop the segment. The tourism
industry was still unable to have statistics and specific strategies on religious tourism as well as
the contributions of visitors to the segment. However, tourism in provinces like An Giang, Ninh
Binh and Quang Ninh reported that millions of visitors take tours and make pilgrimages at the
same time or visit popular religious tourist sites in their localities annually.
Religious destinations have recently been the tourist’s favorite choices; however
religious tourism has faced to challenges and difficulties. The maintenance and repair of historic
and religious buildings to develop religious tourism is a matter for controversy. Some critics
worried about their ancient and neglected appearance. The tourist overloaded in annual festival
is effecting the substantial development of religious tourism in Ninh Binh in particular and
Vietnam in general.
Features
Market segmentation
Vietnam has been recognized as an emerging economy with a significance of the huge
domestic market is ignored by government policy, planning and promotion efforts, there has
been some attention paid to the emergence of domestic tourism in Vietnam, said Bui, H. T., &
Jollife, L, [1].
Segmentation in tourism is the strategic tool to tap all these groups of tourists so that it
can choose a segment to serve most effectively and to focus on service. This study focuses on
segmenting tourists by psychographic factors and socioeconomic factors. The kind of tourism
researched is religious tourism in Vietnam. Results indicate number of tourists group in
Vietnam religious tourism, identifying characteristics of the target group.
As shown in the Table 2, most the respondents were teenagers from 18 to 25 years old,
accounting for 40 percent of the total. Regarding religion, the proportion of Roman Catholic,
Buddhist and non-religion was 36 percent, 30 percent and 34 percent respectively. These
religions are nearly same rate. More than 50 percent of the respondents had the income from 3
to 7 million vnd per month. It was a medium rate of living at present. The major source of
religious organizations (29 percent) and multi-media (6 percent). However, 12 percent of
respondents have not aware of this kind of tourism. This result reveals that faith tourism is
really unfamiliar with Vietnamese and can be developed if becoming more popular. Regarding
frequency, more than 60 percent of participants acknowledged that they just went on tour once
a year. According to these results of “income per month” and “frequency”, they considered
carefully when booking a tour. They chose obviously tour with reasonable price, even low price
to afford. The majority of respondents had a visit to religious destination for working and
relaxes, at 66 percent, whereas only 1 percent of them were for relaxing of exploring. The