Future Wheels – Tourism As a Tool To Promote Community Built Capital

Can Tho city is famous for its agri-tourism in Vietnam which was established and started operating since 2004. The city being under the national government had many challenges initially, but they overcame the challenges gradually in all sectors, that is economical, social, political, infrastructural and environmental (“Portal Can Tho”). Built capital has consequently been improved through tourism in the most significant manner. Usually, the significance of infrastructure goes unnoticed until they are degraded and not functional, because when they fail they cause a lot of inconveniences that were unforeseen in the community. This indicates the measure of correlation and coordination the built capital has to have with the rest of the well-being capitals for its importance to be felt. Three features of tourism promote built capital; any means of transportation, accommodation, and communication.
Transportation; with tourism transport is pervasive, in that, all foreign tourists must fly, drive or travel by boats or trains and so do the locals who are termed the domestic tourists. There the accessibility of any tourist site, which is usually remote, is critical. In Can Tho, the introduction of oversight committees to regulate and push for implementation of projects that are aimed at improving tourism will positively impact the infrastructure (Athanasopoulou, 2013). The challenges faced by the transportation sector is delays in the actualization of projects and construction of critical structures.

Therefore, oversight committees will push for achievement of goals within the deadline. Transport involves all means from air, land, and water; air travel can be boosted through the renovation and expansion of Can Tho International Airport to accommodate the annual increase in the number of tourists.
Communication is the second feature that is essential in tourism, the need for awareness and advertising of the tourism sites through social media and TV for the pleasures and recreation that it can provide so as to attract tourists. Tourism firms are going online regarding management of enterprises and the resources this calls for modernized and well-established telecommunication infrastructure. They, therefore, boost built capital when they modernize their networks, for example, upgrading to fiber networks and advancement of the mobile communication systems for proper coordination of the industries (Chou, 2013). The implementation of policies pertaining goals to migrate all administrative management policies to online, with the aim of increased and efficient service provision, subsequently impacts communication infrastructure positively.
Accommodation; this is a tourism feature that is necessary for comfortability and proper recreation of the tourists. With accommodation and the requisite to absorb and enjoy the local environment, adequate and hygienic housing facilities are vital. This necessity calls for the advancement of accommodation of the built capital of a community. The tourists also enjoy the local cuisines and thus hotels need to link up with the farmers, and this, therefore, calls for improvement of infrastructure to enhance accessibility (Ivezić, 2014). Accommodation can be boosted by encouraging foreign investment in the accommodation sector; this leads to stiff competition that ultimately result in improvement of facilities and services provision.
In summary, the built capital undergoes a continuous process of development that is impacted by tourism in different ways. To gain positive impact on built capital by accommodation has to be exceptional to suit tourists and hence increased profits. Communication sees efficiency in the running of the tourism industry, and thus investments in the sector promote built capital, and finally, transportation ensures accessibilities of the tourist sites, therefore, building of roads and other facilities to guarantee safe arrival of visitors to their destinations.

Using Policy Instruments to Address a Barrier to Sustainable Tourist Development
Can Tho is a city with various accommodation facilities and hotels to suit the vast and assorted taste of the tourists visiting its environs. Therefore, the cuisines in these different hotels are mainly local as their demand increase with the growth of the tourism industry. This, therefore, breeds a communication barrier between the local farmers and may lead to conflicts as the accommodation industry continues to expand by the year (Chou, 2013). The relevance is displayed regarding the presence of education gap between the farmers and the modern accommodation facilities in the case of Can Tho.
This barrier to sustainable development in the city can be addressed putting in place policies that will encourage the hotels in the region to purchase local commodities from the farmers. The reason why the hotels are reluctant to buy farmer’s goods is because of the issues pertaining; quality due to poor packaging and transportation, lack of consistency because of the small produce and the fluctuating prices compared to large retailers and firms that are at par with international procurements standards (Athanasopoulou, 2013). Policies such as applying taxation on the import of already available goods will ensure the hotels invest on increasing standards of farmers and ensuring their regulation through cooperatives. Zoning policy will govern or stop the unregulated expansion of the farming land that mat lead to conflict between farmers and hoteliers. This barrier can also be addressed joint efforts by farmers and hotels through education to diversify and produce world standard products, this cooperation this breaks the communication barrier.
Knowledge and awareness barrier is noted in the technical field in Can Tho, despite the development of schools and vocational institutions, the maturity of the city in term of technical knowledge is not yet felt. This barrier hinders the participation of the locals in infrastructural development of their city which is a source of employment and consequently alleviation of poverty to some extent (Jacobs, 2007). To address this barrier regulations and policies that govern certification should be lenient to the local for them to gain a platform to be mentored by the experts with imported knowledge. The city should promote foreign investment in different means to build capacity and benchmark its experts with those of other countries. They should also thrive to standardize education in the majority of the schools to suit the world standards; this will enable the graduates to have equal opportunity in the job market all over the world.
Analyzing the Vietnam Tourist Plan
There are five methodologies to the achievement of efficient and proper planning according to Hall; economic, boosterism, sustainability, physical, and community. For a tourism product to be declared worthwhile and of substantial value and significance in tourism development, it should display a considerable integration of both preservation of the culture and the environment. While sustainability is the attempt to combine these factors, regarding planning tourism development to guarantee long-term benefits to the members of the particular community. According to United Nation World Tourism Organisation, a plan must conserve biodiversity, ensure optimal utilization of the available ecological resources while maintaining the ecosystem (Ivezić, 2014). This is at par with the Vietnamese Master Plan to 2020 while also advocating for cultural heritage preservation and interlacing of different cultures without conflict for the purpose of long-term gain to all the members of the region.
The Vietnamese government’s end-all strategy sees the achievement of the following; anticipating provision of jobs to the local people to reach 2,200,000 by 2020 and this can be witnessed with the capacity development in progress to fill the job gap created by modernization. It also anticipates considering the income from the tourism sector that is in billions of US Dollars to fully commit to the county’s GDP (“Portal Can Tho”). This planning makes tourism in Vietnam by 2020 a maintainable and forward moving sector confined in both green criteria in ecological pointers. The Vietnamese Government is, therefore, taking a holistic view in their future plans by ensuring that no factor is left behind and no citizens fail to benefit from the thriving tourism industry.
References
Athanasopoulou, A. (2013). Tourism as a driver of economic growth and development in the EU-27 and ASEAN regions. The European Union Centre in Singapore.
Chou, M. C. (2013). Does tourism development promote economic growth in transition countries? A panel data analysis. Economic Modelling, 33, 226-232.
Ivezić, I. (2014). Sustainable ecotourism in Can Tho province, Vietnam: assessing the impact on the livelihood of farmers.
Jacobs, C. (2007). Measuring success in communities: understanding the community capitals framework. Extension Extra. SDSU (South Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Service)(Series 1-6).
“Portal Can Tho.” Cantho.gov.vn. N.p., 2016. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.