Sustainability of Coastal Tourism Development: Comparative Analysis of Vietnam's Northern and Southern Provinces

Abstract

This article presents major differences and similarities related to sustainability in tourism development for the Northern and Southern coastal provinces of Vietnam. The research process results pointed out that sustainable tourism development in the coastal provinces had brought about positive benefits to the national and local economy, local community and government, local community and natural environment, and socio-cultural development. Although sustainable tourism development principles are bene­ficial, their implementation into real-life an enormously is to the specific socio-economic and environmental context, political conditions and institutional conditions, is different in Vietnam. This article tracks how sustainable tourism development is perceived and implemented in the Northern and Southern coastal provinces' main tourism hubs, reflecting the gaps between planning and its imple­ment­ation towards that end in different localities. On that basis, we propose standard solutions but other implementations for ecotourism and cultural tourism deve­lopment across entire coastal area Vietnam as the overarching ways of reaching sustainability.