The Image of Vietnam as a Tourism Destination for Malaysian Tourists

The main objective of this study is to finding the images of Vietnam tourism destination perceived by Malaysian tourists. The study based on replies to 599 questionnaires and the secondary data. The Structure Equation Modelling was employed to identify the relationship among the variables. The result of Confirmation Factor Analysis (CFA) shows the beneficiary images of Vietnam including of “interesting history and rich culture” “delicious cuisines and friendliness”. The negative images in Vietnam consists of poor transportation, poor infrastructure and cleanliness problems that challenges to tourism Vietnam destination. The study may be interesting to destination marketers, Vietnam Government and Travel Companies, especially for those developing destinations which intend to differentiate themselves from others country.


Introduction
Tourism is one of the growing factor that contributing tremendously to the economic development of the world (Salleh et al, .2013;Haque & Khan 2013;Mohamed et al., 2013;Salomao et al., 2013).Regardless of today's economic recession but travelling services and tourism industry have not stopped and are still growing gradually.It plays a key role in fostering the global economic growth and brings about developments of other sectors such as infrastructure, investment, transport, services and so on.World tourism has been increased 6.6% in 2010 from 851 to 940 million and also receipts US$919 billion increased in 2010 (UNWTO, 2011).
According to The Vietnam Tourism Statistic, over the past of ten years Vietnam has seen an extraordinary growth in tourist numbers from the year of 1998 until recent years (Vietnam Travel, 2009).By the year of 2020, Vietnam will attract about 4.5 to 5 million foreigner visitors (Vietnamnet, 2013).Although always in an increasing trend, Vietnam is still far behind compared to Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore in attracting foreign tourists (Le 2010;ASEAN Secretariat, 2008).This is due to Vietnam tourism destination marketing is still weak and only base on subjective experiences (Le, 2010).According to Le (2010, p. 3), "Vietnam has not been study on any images of Vietnam as a tourism destination in foreigner markets".Mr. Vu The Binh, Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association pointed out that building Vietnam as a tourism image or brand was important to the Vietnam tourism industry.Although there were many promotions, marketed destination and site as well as developed infrastructure have been introduced, but have yet to consistently present the tourism of Vietnam to international travelers.In the context, the problem seemed to be mostly with image and communication.Therefore, Vietnam have to better develop its tourism products, especially on images of the tourism (Binh, 2013).
In Vietnam, Malaysian tourists are regarded as one of the target markets and Vietnam's tourism industry has achieved initial success in attracting Malaysian travelers.According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (2014), Malaysian is among top ten international visitors in Vietnam, Malaysia visitors is in queue number eight after Australia in the year of 2011 and 2012.However, the number of Malaysian tourists' visited Vietnam has been increasing and eventually over took Australia in the year of 2013 and ranked at number seven.In fact, the number of Malaysian tourists visiting Vietnam has increased gradually from 2000 to 2013, hitting a peak of nearly 340,000 in 2013 (VNAT, 2014).Therefore, it is crucial to identify the image of Vietnam's tourism according to customer behaviour in order to improve marketing tactics properly.
Establishing an image for Vietnam that distinguishes it from its neighbors is at the heart of its marketing strategy.
The overall of image destination can be enhanced if tourists return on investment and service superiority are conducted through experiential value perspective of Malaysian tourists perception.Therefore, this research aimed to determine and analyze the image destination of Vietnam among Malaysian travelers.

Literature Review
Each destination has an own image, but some can have stronger image than other, which is an important factor to affect the demand.The concept of destination image has become a strategic weapon and competitive advantages in tourism marketing.Thereby, the destination marketer has to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of destination, as it is important to influence tourists' travel motivation and decision making process (O' Leary & Deegan, 2003).Beyond doubt, a positive image of a destination will create a positive thinking and decision making towards to a destination.Whether it right or wrong, true or false, real or imagined, image will shape and guide behaviour (Hasan & Gulcin, 2013).The definition of destination image is complex and problematic because it is based on subjective beliefs and feeling (Lin and Huang, 2009;Salem, 2009;Castro et al., 2007;Grosspietsch, 2006;Jenkins, 1999), there are few image studies on image destination have been sought to fully examine and understand its complex characteristics (Salem, 2009).According to (Echtner & Ritchie, 2003), there are many researchers in tourism field have made recurrent use of the term "destination image" but a precise definition to it is often avoided.
In 1993 and 2003, Echtner and Ritchie identified the components of destination image which could be considered in terms of attribute-holistic, functional-psychological and comment-unique.These components were adopted by many researchers in tourism research so far (Le, 2010;Salem, 2009;Mao, 2008;Stepchenkova & Morrison, 2006, 2008;Govers et al., 2007;Tacsi & Gartner, 2007;Prebensen, 2007;Vaughan, 2007;Baloglu & Mangaloglu, 1999a;Vaughan & Edwards, 1999;Milman & Pizam, 1995).There are a rising number of marketing challenges and one of the most significant is the need for an effective destination positioning in strategy.
In building a strong destination brand, importance is likely to be attached to image creation and destination differentiation.Reynolds (1965) described the formation of destination image as the development mental construct based on few impressions chosen from variety of information such as promotional literature (travel brochures, posters), the opinion from others (family/friends, travel agents) and general media (newspapers, magazines, television, books and movies).Different people have different unique image of a particular destination, which comprises their own memories, associations and imaginations of a particular destination (Jenkins, 1999;Jenkins & McArthur, 1996).In 1972, Gunn was amongst the first of researchers to identify how the cognitive of images are formed, followed by few other researchers investigated the images formation process as well as measurement and employed three-stages from Gunn (1972) which the most recent study adopted by Salem (2009).The process starts with image perceived as organic image, which the image is based primarily upon information assimilated from non-touristic and non-commercial sources such as words of mouths, general media (books and magazines) and education.The next step is induce image, which more commercial sources such as advertising and other promotional tools are used.Finally, modifying the image take place, where the tourists modify their image perceived based on actual experiences.Gunn's theory and Echtner and Ritchie's concept offered a conceptual framework on image formation and perceived, which explained in the conceptual framework of Vietnam as a tourism destination for Malaysian travelers of this research.

Conceptual Framework
This research developed a conceptual research model based on the component of destination image of Etchner and Ritchie ( 2003) and image formation process (Gunn, 1972) theories approach.As Gunn's theory came across as a unique in the formation of destination images, marketing or information sources in tourism industry is vary among historical, economic, political, media or even social sources, which implies silent consent a strong link between a country's image and its national image (Stepchenkova & Eales, 2010).The components of destination image developed by Echtner andRitchie (1993 and2003) comprised of all components of destination images such as attribute, holistic, functional, psychological, common and unique.Therefore, the hypothesis of this study were developed through this theory and concept.The major componen evaluate th Secondly, focuses on measurem "theory" o procedure tourism de

Method
In this stu line with comprised involved q attributes f were used the variou operators' and pilot te

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The study have been tested for all the fit criteria or indices of the structural equation model i.e.P-value>0.05;GFI>0.9;TLI>0.9 and RMSEA<0.08 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988;Anderson & Gerbing, 1988;Byrne, 2001).All criteria including Cronbach's alpha values, factor loadings, path coefficients and goodness of fit indices used to measure the reliability and fit of the model were found to be highly satisfactory.Therefore, this study has confirmed choice factors, marketing environment and image perceived as valid dimension of Malaysian perception about Vietnam.It is thus further concluded that the hypothesized model proposed in this study fits the sample data adequately well and the finding of the study also suggest that all the research hypotheses are confirmed.

Conclusions
The empirical study tested a model to examine the image of Vietnam as a tourist's destination for Malaysian travelers.The results of CFA showed the beneficiary images of Vietnam as interesting history, rich culture, delicious cuisines and friendliness in which these beneficiary images should be maintained and improved.On the other hand, the negative images in Vietnam consists of poor transportation, poor infrastructure and cleanliness which imposes challenges to tourism industry of Vietnam should be given special attention for necessary rectification.Furthermore, the study suggests that there is strong effects of travel television, travel guidebook, brochure in promoting the images in Vietnam, thus, Vietnam should concentrate on promoting its images through these information sources.The results of the study also reveals that internet and words of mouth are among the most important sources of information for Malaysian tourists visiting Vietnam.Therefore, it is important to maximize this cost effective and efficient method in order to target the potential tourists.For instance, by using the effectiveness of internet as an effective tool to target those who had been to Vietnam in order to encourage them to return or share the holiday information with family or friends.Furthermore, internet is important tool to manage a location image and a tool to promote a destination, especially among the young generation travelers which was born in the new technology or information era and spent many hours on the virtual of world in order to looking for information, chatting, socializing and purchasing (Salamao et al., 2013).From the practical standpoint, there shall be efforts by offering the most suitable combination of local tourism service and products packages that support the above image to ensure the success of Vietnam destination marketing.
There were certain limitations of the study undertaken in which such limitations can be considered for future research.Firstly, the target population of the study is Malaysian travelers located mainly the major cities in West Malaysia i.e.Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Penang, and Johor Bahru.Secondly, the promotion and marketing of Vietnam was mainly based on the secondary data, which available worldwide in the internet, books, documents, thesis, magazines and newspaper without any field studies and contacts with inside informants.Thirdly, the limitation of the study deals also with the lacking of data for both side Malaysia and Vietnam.Therefore, future research should be undertaken to examine the differences among the socio-demographic such as gender, age, or occupation and sub-group for those who had been to Vietnam and those who had not; to study the effect of information sources as an important aspect of destination image, to study on the relationship on textual information such as pictorial material and analysis of promotional material.

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Figu pted from Jenkins