Destination Responses to COVID-19 Waves: Is “Green Zone” Initiative a Holy Grail for Tourism Recovery?

Abstract

Despite the stagnant status of the tourism industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the efforts to reopen the tourism destinations as green zones in Vietnam have paid off with some encouraging achievements. This inspires other green zones to consider a more adaptive approach to the ongoing pandemic crisis. However, little is known about the pandemic crisis management and tourism destination recovery. Therefore, this study selected Can Tho city as a case study to explore how a tourism destination as a green zone can recover during pandemic waves. Different methods were utilized in this study, including document analysis, field observation, and semi-structured interview. The findings generally indicate that a green zone could recover their tourism business under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings highlight the critical relationship among key stakeholders and the leading role of the central government toward pandemic prevention and control. The early response to the crisis from the local governments was found to be decisive, and the policy-related measures facilitated the removal of potential barriers and alleviated the crisis consequences. In addition, the involvement of the tourism industry in an adaptive way has contributed to the quick recovery of the green zones’ tourism business. Importantly, the adaptive transformation from the tourism enterprises in a visionary way was found to be essential to the empowerment of their organizational resilience during the pandemic crisis. The lessons learnt from this study also bring valuable experiences for other tourism destinations and elicit a new approach to co-living with the ongoing pandemic in a sustainable way. Theoretically, this study provides a better understanding of tourism management and destination recovery during the global pandemic crisis. In addition, the research also adds many important practical implications for the tourism industry and the related stakeholders to foster tourism revitalization during and after the pandemic in a more sustainable way.

1. Introduction

Tourism is an economic sector that is vulnerable to crises, natural disasters, political instability or global health pandemics [1]. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2019 and has been spreading around the world, leading to a great shock to the global tourism industry in both the short and long term. Vietnam’s tourism industry is no exception in being affected by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak of the disease has been projected to cause considerable damage to Vietnam’s tourism industry, with an especially sharp decline in the number of international tourist arrivals, which accounts for more than 30% of the total number of international tourists to Vietnam. Currently, there are many studies and general reports on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry. The World Tourism Organization [2] surveyed 220 countries and territories along with more than 30 international and regional organizations. More specifically, WTO suggested that governments have to respond rapidly and strongly to the magnitude and scope of measures that increase over time.

Most countries have adopted economic stimulus packages, including both financial and monetary measures, to save their tourism economy. In this regard, all measures have provided financial support to small- and medium-sized enterprises and self-employed workers to alleviate the bankruptcy rate, ensuring maintenance, solving shortages and promoting job retention and job security for workers. At the same time, the WTO [2] synthesized four groups of measures to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic that have been implemented by most countries around the world, including financial support measures; measures to secure employment and skills training; smart marketplace initiatives and partnerships; and initiatives and measures to restart the tourism industry. Noticeably, many countries have adopted the “green zone” initiative and boosted their national vaccination program in order to facilitate tourism recovery [1]. In order to stimulate the tourism demand, many countries pay attention to implementing strategic measures to revive the tourism industry and motivate tourists’ travel revisitation in post-pandemic [3]. Therefore, the leading role of the governments may contribute to the effective crisis management and fostering the destination recovery in a more proactive way [4].

In Vietnam, the tourism industry has been seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including an enormous loss of tourism revenue during the first quarter of 2020, a significant drop in international visitors, shutdowns of tourism establishments, or the increasing concern regarding the unemployment rate [5]. Additionally, the report suggested solutions to restore the tourism industry by developing crisis management planning, initiating marketing expansion to potential markets, and assisting the affected businesses with exemptions from health and social insurance contributions or reduction in loan interest rates.

In addition, the Vietnamese government has attempted to remove barriers and challenges to facilitate the tourism destinations as green zones to rebound the domestic tourism industry. As a result, this has contributed to the encouraging recovery of many tourism destinations in Vietnam. According Van et al. [6], Can Tho is one of the typical tourism destinations in Vietnam that has successfully rebounded around 70% of its tourism capacity after the first pandemic wave. This promising figure inspires other safe tourism destination across the country to consider a tourism re-opening during the pandemic.

Despite the encouraging recovery of the green zones, little is known about how green zones have responded throughout the pandemic waves. Therefore, this study aims to explore how a typical tourism destination as a green zone could revitalize the local tourism industry during the lingering pandemic crisis. In order to shed light on the research phenomenon, this study investigates the following research questions:

• How could a tourism destination as a green zone recover losses in the pandemic?
• To what extent do the key players contribute to the success of the destination recovery?
• In what ways do the key stakeholders effectively engage in the recovery process during the pandemic crisis?
• What are the key lessons learnt from a green zone’s tourism recovery in response to future pandemic waves?

2. Literature Review

This section will critically review the current literature regarding destination response to the pandemic, crisis management and discussing destination resilience from a multi-stakeholder perspective.

2.1. COVID-19 Pandemic Impact and Disaster Crisis Management

The coronavirus disease has been spreading to many countries around the world since 2019, and its outbreaks were unprecedentedly disruptive to the global tourism industry in a negative way. The restrictions of global mobility and border closures have been selected as potential measures to stop the spread of the pandemic [7]. As a result, the international tourism business was seriously influenced due the sharp decline in the global tourist demand [8]. Instead of shutting down the whole tourism industry, many countries have attempted to maintain their domestic tourism business as a driving force to overcome the difficulties caused by the long-lasting pandemic [8,9,10].

According to Kusumaningrum and Wachyuni [11], it was likely that there was an increasingly significant demand for travel after the pandemic waves. Ivanova et al. [12] also stressed that visiting friends and relatives might be a popular motivation among tourists after long-lasting lockdowns. More interestingly, according to a research by Yuni [13], 35.7% of tourists partaking in the survey decided to take a holiday immediately after the pandemic. This indicates that domestic tourists are willing to make travel plans right after the “new normal” condition. However, tourists tended to refuse to make travel decisions to the seriously affected destinations within a year in [14], while the safe tourism destinations were found to be more attractive to visitors’ travel intention after the lockdowns were removed. Therefore, it is, to some extent, reasonable for the safe tourism destinations around the world to consider re-opening their domestic tourism in order to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 and save their local tourism-and-hospitality enterprises.

Tourism is generally seen as a vulnerable sector, which might be damaged by natural disasters or man-made crises [15,16]. As the matter of fact, the recovery process of the tourism destinations after the shocks of crises is likely to be time consuming and challenging [17]. Therefore, many researchers have attempted to propose a crisis disaster management model (CDM) to enable destinations to better respond and recover quickly after the crises. Murphy and Bayley [18] initiated a disaster management model stressing the four phases, including assessment, warning, impact and recovery. The authors found that there was a critical relationship between the assessment and warning stage, which provided opportunities for a tourism destination to reduce the impact of disasters and recover efficiently. More specifically, the early warnings related the disaster and efficient preparation facilitated the two examined case studies in overcoming the crisis and amazingly rebound the destinations. During the impact stage, the authors also argued that a proper assessment of the disaster impacts was significant toward the destination revitalization. The authors also highlighted the importance of the community involvement which might foster the recovery of the local tourism destinations in a more sustainable way. The policy-related measures were found essential toward stimulating the local tourism industry and the revisitation demand of tourists in post-disasters. Although Murphy and Bayley’s disaster management model has been widely adopted in coping with the natural disaster crises, it is suggested developing a more adaptive model to better deal with the unprecedented disasters at much larger scale.

Faulkner [14] further modified a more widely prevalent model which stressed key stages as including pre-event, prodromal, emergency, intermediate, long term, and resolution. However, Scott et al. [19] pointed out the gap of Faulkner’s model, which does not elaborate the recovery stage, and further developed this theoretical framework by adding long-term recovery. Ritchie [20] argued that the crisis disaster model should be more detailed in order to cope with different events and the degree of the crisis impact on a tourism destination. This argument makes sense in the context of the complicated and long-lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, crisis disaster management may need to take into account the staged impact of the pandemic so that the effectiveness of the response to each stage of the pandemic could be optimized.

Although the abovementioned models can be applied for tourism destination management against different types of crises, the COVID-19 pandemic is supposed to be much more complicated and unparalleled. As the matter of fact, the COVID-19 pandemic is a global health crisis, with a long-lasting impact on the global scale which have never been witnessed before [21]. Therefore, the strategic response of the tourism industry might need to take into consideration different factors in order to provide an effective measure to survive different waves of the pandemic and particularly suit the context of each tourism destination. Therefore, instead of a shutdown of a tourism destination, many tourism scholars suggest that adopting a tourism destination as a green zone might be a potential measure to foster the domestic tourism recovery in a country [22]. The next section discusses the tourism scholar’s perspective and the practical experiences of a few countries taking this measure to recover their tourism business during the pandemic.

2.2. Green Zone Initiative and Tourism Destination Recovery

The global tourism industry has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; its impact on the tourism sectors has been devastating and unprecedented [22]. Many countries around the world have had to prioritize pandemic prevention and alleviation of the loss of human lives over economic benefits [5,10]. Therefore, this leads to more challenges facing the tourism industry in order to survive during the crisis. According to Wieprow and Gawlik [23], very few tourism enterprises could maintain their business throughout the waves of COVID-19, while the majority faced business suspension or even bankruptcy.

Therefore, many countries have attempted to save their tourism industry by taking advantage of their safe destinations to recover domestic tourism activities. A new tourism tendency during the COVID-19 waves called “green zoning network” or “green zone” tourism has been initiated in different parts of the world. This terminology refers to a policy response from countries to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic to gain tourism resilience by facilitating all the fundamental conditions for the tourism business to regain normalcy [24]. Despite the different conceptualization of a green zone in different countries, this term is commonly known as a safe tourism destination with zero cases of COVID-19 [11], and the tourism activities are required to be operated in a secure way which must align with the local regulations regarding the onsite epidemic prevention and control [25]. However, the practical experiences of the domestic tourism practice during the pandemic have elicited the countries to adjust the criteria of a tourism destination as a green zone, which mainly relies on the national policy in each country. In the context of Vietnam’s tourism industry, a tourism destination as a green zone has to meet additional requirements regarding good healthcare system capacity and the vaccination rate of the local people and tourists. Wilson et al. [26] believe that effective vaccination for COVID-19 could be a key criterion of a green zone since the re-opening of tourism activities should also ensure disinfection at destinations. In a global context, a networking of green zones among countries has to meet tougher requirements to foster the tourism business re-opening, although the feasibility of this initiative is limited. For example, New Zealand and Australia created a travel bubble to stimulate travel demand and tourism recovery between the two countries but have had to pause it because of the increasing risk concern and pandemic control [27]. Similarly, Thailand is another typical example which initiates the “Phuket sandbox” to allow green zones to rebound their tourism business [6].

Under the pressure of the highly transmissible variants of COVID-19, the re-opening of the tourism business at green zones may lead to unprecedented disruption. Therefore, the concern about the effective degree of the green zone initiative remains a controversial topic that is making many countries reluctant to implement it in practice. Despite the limited success of green zone recovery during the pandemic, the experiences from a few countries, such as Thailand and Vietnam, have inspired other international tourism destinations. For example, the unexpected achievements during the pandemic in Vietnam have elicited a promising scenario that effective tourism resilience could be doable, even feasible, in the current challenging stage of the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a study by Van Nguyen et al. [28], there are many critical reasons why Vietnam has accomplished dual targets, including effective epidemic prevention and tourism recovery during the second and third waves of the pandemic. First of all, the epidemic prevention regulations should be strict enough to minimize the potential risks to the green zones. Lessons from Vietnam indicate that the domestic tourism could be operated safely during the pandemic if all stakeholders are highly committed to the disinfection regulations. Moreover, Vietnam was very proactive with good preparedness for the COVID-19 impact, and the policy responses were found to be effective in crisis management [29]. Last but not least, Vietnam has issued all the necessary measures to improve the healthcare system, raising community involvement as well as launching proper stimulus packages to foster recovery of the tourism industry and tourism demand in the post-pandemic period [30]. In general, the green zone initiative is feasible in the context of Vietnam’s tourism industry, and the targets could be achievable with small scale of the COVID-19 impact.

However, during the fourth wave of the pandemic, the green zone initiative could be reintroduced as a potential measure, despite facing more challenges. Many scholars argued that green zone tourism could be infeasible because of different obstacles. Poor collaboration among stakeholders is claimed to be a key reason that may affect the epidemic prevention during the re-opening period. Numerous studies have highlighted the fact that many tourists prefer not to wear masks at crowded tourist attractions [27,31,32]. In addition, the lack of effective communication regarding safe tourism destinations has affected tourists’ travel intention in a negative way. Typical evidence from other countries was claimed to be associated with fear of traveling among tourists because of the lack of information about green zones [21,33,34] and because of fake news [17,35]. In fact, the healthcare system capacity of the green zones is not always ensured.

It is interesting to learn from Thailand where some initial success was achieved from the green-zone initiative, namely the “Phuket sandbox”, which is known as an upgraded version of tourism bubbles in other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia or Philippines. Evidently, Thailand issued effective pandemic prevention regulations which have saved their tourism business by fostering tourism operation at safe destinations [36]. According to Knight [22] Thailand’s preliminary plan regarding “learning to live with COVID-19” aimed to ease quasi-lockdown rules to foster tourism recovery in Phuket in October 2021. This originated from the previous practice of the green zoning tourism initiative, namely the “No quarantine” Phuket sandbox, which has brought hope for tourism resilience in this tourism-dependent country.

In general, the typical examples from such countries as Thailand and Vietnam may inspire other countries to facilitate their green zones to recover their own tourism business. However, more research should be conducted to investigate how tourism destinations as green zones could operate their tourism business in an effective way.

3. Research Methodology

This study employed a semi-structured interview to explore how a green zone as a tourism destination effectively responds to different waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. A wide range of relevant data sources were also used to shed light on the research phenomenon. The semi-structured interview provided the primary data for the study with in-depth information, while the secondary data collection offered the researchers an opportunity to review all official and relevant documents related to the research objectives.

The research design began with developing a framework for the qualitative data collection procedure. This research adopted theoretical frameworks concerning crisis disaster management models suggested by Murphy and Bayley [18] and Ritchie [20]. The semi-structure interview development focused on mainly collecting qualitative data by using open-ended questions, while the initial predetermined questions also provided a basis of understanding about the research sample. Accordingly, a set of questions for the interview was developed by the authors, relevantly suited to the research context of COVID-19 in Vietnam. Then, the interview questions were finalized after conducting a pilot study with tourism experts at Can Tho University.

Concerning the rationale for the research participants, this study developed a set of criteria to choose the relevant informants. All potential respondents for this study had to be involved in their business at the local destination and be holding managerial positions. This was critical to the study since the informants could provide in-depth information about how different stakeholders of the local tourism industry reacted to the crisis. According to Sim et al. [37], there is no exact requirement for a research sample size but it depends on the scope and the purposes of the tourism research. Therefore, this study attempted to recruit 290 respondents who are representatives of different sectors of the local tourism industry in Can Tho city. Can Tho was selected as a case study since this tourism destination was re-opened for tourism activities after the first wave of the pandemic. As discussed in the literature review, Can Tho is a relevant case study because it meets all the requirements of a safe destination during the pandemic, and the tourism business recovery of this destination indicates some promising achievements. Importantly, Can Tho experienced the first wave of the pandemic on the 23 January 2020, followed by the second wave on the 25 July 2020, the third wave on the 28 January 2021, and the fourth wave since the 27 April 2021. After the first wave, Can Tho was one of the green zones that reopened tourism activities to domestic tourists.

This study used the snowball sampling method to recruit relevant participants for the research objectives. A total of 290 managers recruited for the semi-structured interview were the representatives of tourism-and-hospitality-related organizations and local tourism departments (see

Table 1. Research participants in the semi-structured interview.

Participants’ Gender	Position	Type of Business Involvement	Number (%)
45 M/35 F	Managers	Accommodations	80 (27.5)
24 M/26 F	Managers	Travel agencies	50 (17.2)
24 M/26 F	Managers	F & B establishments	50 (17.2)
20 M/10 F	Managers	Family-owned tourism business	30 (10.3)
32 M/38 F	Managers	Tourist attractions	70 (24.1)
05 M/5 F	Managers	Other tourism service providers	10 (3.7)

Note: M (Males), F (Females).

). This ensured the collection of profound information regarding how the local tourism business in the green zone has effectively responded and rebounded during the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. The quantitative data were encrypted and processed by using SPSS 20.0 software, while the thematic analysis was conducted to identify emerging themes by using NVivo software.

Document analysis provides a systematic understanding about the research phenomenon based on the official documents [38]. As such, this study employed the document analysis in order to shed light on the effectiveness of Vietnam’s tourism responses to different waves of the COVID-19 impact at the local and national management levels. This enabled the researchers to have a better understanding about how policy-related measures influence the recovery practice of the green zones in Vietnam. Therefore, the official documents related to the pandemic prevention and tourism destinations were carefully reviewed.

The field research approach was also employed as an integral part in this study to explore how the local tourism businesses were actually operated during the pandemic waves. These approaches enabled the authors to capture more reliable information and assessment of the research phenomenon. Field notes were also collected and analyzed to identify key emerging themes and categories that provided an overall reflection of the local tourism destinations resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

4. Research Findings

This section will present the key findings regarding how a tourism destination as a green zone could recover its tourism business during the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis from a multi-stakeholder analysis.

4.1. Impact of COVID-19 on the Tourism Industry at Green Zones

The COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam has been causing extremely heavy losses in both socio-economic and human lives [4]. According to the General Statistics of Vietnam [39], the outbreak of COVID-19 has tremendously affected different sectors of the tourism industry, and the degree of impact varied from sector to sector and between the waves of the pandemic. More specifically, Vietnam’s response to the first wave of COVID-19 was claimed to be passive; therefore, the overall impact on the tourism business was enormous [33]. The document analysis in this study also found that both the central and local government almost had no active response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the General Statistics of Vietnam [39], the lack of preparedness and experience for such a significant global pandemic as COVID-19 and the limited healthcare system triggered tremendous obstacles for Vietnam in coping with the crisis. Evidently, the tourism industry almost had no guidelines concerning pandemic prevention and proper policy measures to support the tourism-related enterprises to recover during and after the first crisis.

However, Tran et al. [40] believed that Vietnam has better responded to the second and third waves of the pandemic impact, owing to the updated suggestions and guidelines from the World Health Organization and Vietnam’s own prevention and measures gained from the previous valuable experience. In order to support the tourism industry, a stimulus package was issued to foster domestic tourism recovery. Along with the policy initiative and measures, Vietnam attempted to achieve dual targets, including tourism business resilience and epidemic prevention and control. This new crisis management approach was found to be effective and has contributed to the tourism revitalization of green zones. A typical example for the tourism resilience during the second and the third wave of the pandemic was the encouraging achievement of nearly 60% of Can Tho city’s tourism capacity [33]. This inspires other tourism destinations to carefully re-consider reopening if pandemic prevention and control are well managed. Scholars also determined that the re-opening of green zones has fostered the recovery of the domestic tourism industry in general and destinations without a pandemic impact in particular [10].

However, the fourth wave of the pandemic impact is likely posing an extremely tough challenge for Vietnam. Despite the great efforts of the government concerning using all of the large-scale testing, quarantining resources, and vaccination empowerment, Vietnam’s healthcare system appears to be unable to cope with the currently “rocketing” corona cases related to new variants and other socio-economic consequences due to lingering lockdowns [34]. According to Samuel [41], the total economy of Vietnam has been hit by the fourth wave of COVID-19, leading to the shutdown of all businesses, including tourism, the most vulnerable industry. Most of the officially public and private documents regarding the pandemic acknowledged that Vietnam’s previous responses to the current variant of COVID-19 were likely ineffective with the fourth wave of COVID-19 and, to some extent, uncontrollable [10,30,41]. The biggest challenge might stem from the overloading treatment capacity of Vietnam’s healthcare system [16]. The Deputy Minister of Health of Vietnam acknowledged that Vietnam might have faced a worsening situation of healthcare-system collapse like India if all of the resources had not been focused on the pandemic prevention priority. According to the General Statistics of Vietnam [39], during the first eight months of 2021, the market witnessed the withdrawal from over 85,000 enterprises of which tourism enterprises were found to be more vulnerable to the crisis.

Due to the initial encouraging achievements of the domestic tourism recovery at the green zone, the potential to re-open the tourism business in other tourism destinations in Vietnam have gained increasing attention among the tourism scholars and local governments. The findings from official document analysis reveal that the governments in other regions in Vietnam have considered creating a unique mechanism to facilitate their local tourism business. According to Van et al. [6], Phu Quoc Island and many other potential safe destinations have implemented their own measures to re-open their local tourism industry after a long-lasting shutdown. Notably, the findings also indicate that the central government has provided efficient guidelines related to pandemic prevention and key tourism policy that encourages the local government to foster their local tourism business in a flexible and sustainable way. However, the Ministry of Health of Vietnam [29] stressed that each local destination might take cautious steps and careful consideration of all potential risks and the prevention of the loss of human lives since tourism revenue was not the prioritized goal.

4.2. Tourism Destination Governance

This study selected Can Tho city as a case study to examine how a local tourism industry responds to the different waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this section highlights the key measures implemented in each stage of the pandemic and how tourism sectors have suffered and recovered from the crisis.

As discussed in the previous sections, green zones in Vietnam refer to epidemic-safe areas where tourism activities are allowed to be operated. In order to shed light on the research phenomenon related to tourism recovery of green zones in the COVID-19 pandemic context, this study selected Can Tho city as a typical case study for some critical reasons. First of all, Can Tho is known as one of the most popular tourism destinations in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam, where many tourism destinations became eligible for re-opening their tourism businesses after pandemic assurance was well controlled. In addition, there was convincing evidence related to the success of the local tourism recovery, despite the huge impact of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first wave of the pandemic [42].

According to Van et al. [6], the tourism industry in Can Tho as a green zone has witnessed some encouraging outcomes. The destination recovery has marked a tremendous achievement with around 60% of its capacity, which encouraged other destinations across the country to take into account the re-opening of green zones for tourism recovery in a sustainable way. Most importantly, Can Tho is known as a green zone that has attracted a great number of tourists after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Can Tho city has issued many official documents directing the suspension of events and festivals in localities, reducing the scale of festivals that have opened and suspending festivals. As a result, many events scheduled to be held in the second and third quarters of 2020 were suspended. Similar to the above two measures, the implementation of measures to restrict and close tourist attractions and measures to propagate and advise on the implementation of tourism safety in Can Tho city have been implemented. After a period of temporary suspension of operation at tourist attractions in the area, it caused a decrease in revenue and number of visitors at tourist sites. The estimated decrease could be up to 70% in the period from March to July 2020.

In order to support the local tourism recovery, many measures have been initiated to alleviate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry and promote and stimulate domestic tourism, providing financial support measures and skills training for employees to foster recovery of the local tourism industry. Recently, the government of Vietnam has a support package of VND 62,000 billion, targeting employees, but the implementation was slow and limited due to high employment rate and risks. However, the findings in this study indicate that the measures related to financial support and skill training for the tourism workforce have not been as effective as expected.

Regarding financial support measures to restore tourism, the level of implementation of this measure in Vietnam and Can Tho city is not satisfactory, compared to other countries in the world. Vietnam reacted slowly when making decisions on financial support for the tourism industry, while other countries have had supportive policies in place since April and May 2020 [6]. In addition, Vietnam has not really focused on recovering the damage from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry, but only focused on solving the problem of financial support for a few spearheading economic sectors or prioritizing the key economic sectors, such as the import and export industry. Similarly, the shortage of budget for the tourism industry is another typical challenge to stimulate tourism re-opening and recovery. Evidently, some key proposals have been initiated to support businesses in taxes, fees, delay in interest payment and disbursing loans, restructuring loans, opening new loans to support tourism businesses, and requesting policies to support employees in the tourism sector. However, the document analysis indicates that most of the plans are progressed slowly. In fact, implementing a number of loan support packages for businesses may be critical for the tourism enterprises, but it remains difficult for businesses to access loan support packages.

These above findings generally indicate that the central and local governments have not taken proper and effective responses to the pandemic, and this influences the recovery capability of the local tourism industry. However, there is a positive signal of the responses of the local tourism industry, which will be further discussed in the next section.

4.3. The Responses of the Local Tourism Industry

In general, most of the businesses in the tourism sector in the area of Can Tho city have implemented the guiding documents of the local tourism industry. Along with complying with the instructions of the local agencies, the tourism enterprises also actively took multiple measures, such as opening training courses to improve skills in disease prevention and disinfection control for their working staff. Some travel businesses also actively changed the work structure by working from home or reducing operating hours at the business premises. Other measures to proactively respond to the impact of the COVID-19 were found to be prevalent among the enterprises, including measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the tourism environment; measures to minimize the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business activities of enterprises; and measures to restore business activities of tourism enterprises. The majority of surveyed enterprises said that they have implemented the above groups of measures with the goal of reducing the impact of the pandemic on their business operations and, at the same time, creating favorable conditions for quick recovery (see

Table 2. Tourism enterprises taking measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, n = 290.

Measures	Number of Enterprises	Percentage (%)
Advise employees and customers to prevent and control COVID-19	277	95.5%
Regularly clean business premises	247	85.2%
Temporarily suspend business	182	62.8%
Only serve customers in localities where there is no COVID-19 pandemic	140	48.3%

(Source: From the authors, 2021).

).

Table 2 shows that measures to advise customers to prevent and control pandemics and measures to regularly clean at business establishments are the two most common measures. These are easy-to-implement measures since both tourism enterprises and customers were all aware of the compulsory disinfection regulations suggested by the local authorities. In addition, 182 enterprises chose to suspend their business operations in order to regain recovery capacity after the crisis. However, the research notes also reconfirmed the reality that few tourism enterprises operate their business during pandemic outbreaks. The majority of respondents acknowledged the fact that their business revenue and number of visitors dropped sharply, so they could not afford to continue operating after the pandemic. As a result, business suspension was the common decision among the informants. Out of all 290 enterprises, 140 respondents have taken measures to only serve customers in localities where there is no pandemic. The implementation of the measure of accepting customers only in localities where there is no pandemic is a difficult measure for most businesses because it is very difficult to control the source of visitors in the complicated situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The implementation of the above measure in practice only stops at an average level.

According to the results shown in

Table 3. Tourism enterprise’s own measures to reduce the pandemic impacts (n = 290).

Measure	Number of Enterprises	Percentage (%)
Save water and energy	160	55.2%
Focus on exploiting the domestic market	216	74.5%
Ensure the health and safety of employees	215	74.1%
Lay off employees	98	33.8%
Salary reduction for employees	49	16.9%

(Source: From the authors, 2021).

, most businesses took measures to focus on exploiting the domestic market (74.5%) because the tourism industry in Can Tho city quickly identified the domestic market as the key tourism market at the end of 2020 and 2021. Because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is still difficult for the international market to recover, while the domestic market has made many positive changes. In parallel with identifying key markets, enterprises also took many measures, such as ensuring the health and safety of employees and using water and energy sparingly. Although businesses face many difficulties in conducting business, the percentage of enterprises giving employees leave and reducing wages accounts for a low proportion, at 33.8% and 16.9%, respectively.

The findings in

Table 4. Tourism enterprises taking measures to recover their tourism business (n = 290).

Measure	Number of Enterprises	Percentage (%)
Build customer trust	200	68.9%
Promote communication	151	52.1%
Promotion	144	49.6%
Service discount	144	49.6%

(Source: From the authors, 2021).

indicate that tourism enterprises have had proper responses to the pandemic. More specifically, the majority of tourism businesses in Can Tho city have taken common measures with the aim of restoring business activities by reducing service prices, creating promotional packages, promoting business propaganda and building trust with customers at 68.9%. According to the respondents, the implementation of measures to prevent, combat and respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to better epidemic prevention and control at their organization and at tourism destinations. Through strict compliance with the direction of the tourism industry and local authorities, and at the same developing their own proactive measures, the tourism enterprises believe that the image of a safe destination has been improved, and the tourist demand has begun to rise again. Compared with some other localities in Vietnam, the respondents believed that Can Tho city has successfully coped with the pandemic and achieved tourism growth. Evidently, the document analysis in this study reconfirmed that Can Tho was supposed to be a safe tourist destination with the fewest community infections, compared to tourist cities in the country.

In general, the effective responses from the local level at Can Tho city indicate the potential for tourism recovery during and after the pandemic, and the disinfection at tourism attractions in post-pandemic tourism re-opening could be achievable. However, this initial success may require an effective participation of all stakeholders in an involved way.

4.4. Tourism Stakeholders’ Involvement and Commitments

The involvement among the key stakeholders plays an important role toward an effective response to the crisis disaster management at the tourism destination level [37,43]. In this research, the key players identified, including local and central government, tourism-related enterprises, tourists and local communities, may contribute to the sustainable practice of the local tourism industry in the context of the ongoing pandemic.

The governments of all levels have played a crucial part in pandemic prevention and control. The majority of tourism enterprises in this research believe that their tourism recovery capacity depends on the pro-active management strategies provided by the authorities. A typical explanation from a tourism manager is as follows:

I supposed the measures suggested by the central government enabled us to be aware of the dangers of the pandemic and necessary measures to ensure the safety for our employees and customers. The guidelines allowed us to better prevent the spread of the pandemic while our tourism business was well-managed.

In addition, the local authority may contribute to the effective inspection, supervision and implementation of epidemic prevention and control measures which meet the specific condition of each tourism destination. A respondent from a tourism organization stressed the importance of the local authority’s disease management toward the local tourism business:

It is critical for the local authority to disseminate relevant information on disease prevention and update on infected cases through the electronic information portals. Apart from this, the authority may need to provide important support to tourism enterprises so that they can maintain and recover after the pandemic.

Tourism enterprises are important stakeholders who directly provide tourism services to tourists and operate the tourism businesses during and after the crises [37]. Therefore, tourism recovery during the second and third waves of the pandemic in Can Tho city was achieved. According to a representative of the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, the majority of tourism enterprises have strictly complied with compulsory epidemic prevention at their organizations and tourism attractions. However, due to the different financial abilities, human resources and tourism offerings, all tourism owners have modified their own measures to survive during the outbreak of the pandemic.

Effective communication among key stakeholders is found to be critically influential to the collaboration and recovery process at the destination level. The findings in this study highlight the importance of the mainstream sources of information to stimulate the tourism demand. A study by Van et al. [6] also reveal that the impact of trustworthy information provision from mainstream channels (e.g., television, and newspapers) has affected the travel intention of tourists to green zones. Therefore, the effective communication might be an important determinant affecting the tourism recovery of destinations during and after the pandemic.

4.5. Transformational Adaptation and Rebuilding the Organizational Resilience

In response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have drastically overreacted to the crisis by applying draconian measures, including widespread lockdowns, mobility restrictions or shutdowns of the tourism industry. On the other hand, other countries decide to “live with COVID” instead of sticking to “zero COVID” measures because of the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing and complicated [40]. Therefore, in order to be more resilient to the current waves of the pandemic, the global tourism industry needs to be more adaptive to the unprecedented challenge of the current crisis [42]. In this sense, the experience from the local tourism industry in this research reflects several valuable experiences regarding the adaptive transformation, which could strengthen their surviving capacity over different waves of the pandemic, empowering their organizational renaissance.

The findings in this study reveal the importance of active transformation measures that have enhanced the opportunities for enterprises to survive and recover during the ongoing pandemic. The majority of tourism enterprises have renovated their crisis management model to alleviate financial burden to sustain their business in the long run. A typical explanation of a tourism manager in this study reflected his organizational operation model and business strategies to suit the current context of the pandemic crisis.

Due to the complicated waves of COVID-19 pandemic, we have to re-train our staff to operate our business in a more adaptive and effective way… This means we re-structure required tasks and responsibilities of our human resources,… preparing our staff to be ready with any risk scenarios in the long-run. (A male tourism company manager).

Digital transformation is found to be an important innovation which helps reduce related risks during the operation of tourism enterprises, thereby sustaining revenue sustainability. A common explanation from a hospitality enterprise claims the following:

Our booking system and internal communication have been developed to minimize personal contact to avoid infection but still maintain the productivity. Therefore, we still welcome guests to our hotel and the quality of our services are still maintained at the highest level we can. (A female manager from a four star-hotel).

In order to maximize business income, the majority of the examined enterprises have transformed their organizational business targets to meet the new demand of the industry in the context of COVID-19.

Instead of closing our business or mass-downsizing of human resources, we cooperated with the local government to offer room capacity for quarantine, providing our vehicles for rent or even offering services related COVID-19 control. (A male tourism company manager).

Importantly, the mindset-related innovation during the ongoing wave of the pandemic is found to be the most critical transformation that sustains the enterprises’ business and survival during the lingering crisis. A hotel manager stressed the importance of vision and strategy in co-existing with COVID-19 in the long run, as they have fostered the creativity and adaptive capacity of enterprises. One of the typical examples for this change is as follows:

Our management board have decided not to close our business but determined to live with COVID-19 waves. This spirit has been conveyed to our entire staff. You see the pandemic has lasted for two years and we still maintain our business at certain level… This sprit preparation has made our staff ready for any circumstances.

Most of the examined enterprises in this study generally attempt to seek transformational adaptation to the unpredictably ongoing impact of the pandemic. By rebuilding strong organizational resilience, the local tourism enterprises can expect to successfully cope with the pandemic in their short- and long-term vision.

5. Discussion

This section interprets the significance of the research results in light of the current understanding of the destination response to the pandemic crisis and further expands the discussion concerning key factors influencing the recovery of a green zone and valuable lessons learnt for future responses.

5.1. Key Determinants to the Effective Response to COVID-19

Experiences from Vietnam imply that preparedness plays a key role in crisis management and the effectiveness of tourism recovery strategies during and after a pandemic. In spite of some encouraging success of the responses, the document analysis in this study indicates that there were some key limitations of crisis disaster management at the local and central levels facing Vietnam. According to Van Nguyen et al. [28], the central government has slowly responded to the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the local authorities across the country almost had no response to the pandemic. As a result, all local tourism sectors were also passive to the crisis, and there was no instant response to the first wave of COVID-19. This is likely a common difficulty in a lot of countries where healthcare systems are limited and there is a lack of experience in coping with such a global health shock as COVID-19 [2]. As a matter of fact, the COVID-19 pandemic has been such an unprecedented crisis that has lasted for years, and its impact on tourism destinations appears to be worsened [43].

Therefore, the poor preparedness of the local tourism industry had led to an enormous loss of tourism revenue, job reduction, and downsizing of the tourism and hospitality business [5,40]. From the global perspective, UNWTO [44] has closely worked with China and the World Health Organization (WHO) to monitor the COVID-19 outbreak, but very little is known about the devastating impact of the pandemic on the tourism destinations in the world. This may explain why developing countries such as Vietnam was likely passive to the first wave of the COVID-19 but proactive to the following shocks [45]. Due to the top–down management approach, local governments in Vietnam implemented their action plan based on the central government’s regulations and guidelines. What is more, the proactive response from tourism enterprises also contribute to effective epidemic prevention and control onsite. These instant responses contribute to the dual targets, including epidemic prevention and control, and tourism business operation during the outbreaks.

The findings in this study also highlight the importance of the local health care system capacity at the green zone and the vaccination rate within the communities and tourists as the determinants for the successful re-opening of the local tourism business in a sustainable way. According to Quang et al. [46] a tourism destination might consider welcoming the domestic tourists’ re-visitation if the local healthcare system is ensured, or the system may become overloaded and out of control, like other seriously affected regions in Vietnam. The failure of the green zone networking in many countries also reflect the importance of the healthcare system and especially the vaccination rate in the communities. Phuket’s sandbox could be seen as a typical example of the successful re-opening of the tourism business since vaccination-related measures, such as the vaccine visa, have contributed to the prevention of disease spreading and revive the tourism demand.

5.2. Trustworthy Communication and Social Involvement in the Crisis Management

In order to maintain domestic tourism during the controllable stages of the pandemic, effective communication among stakeholders plays an integral part toward building trust and motivating the domestic tourist demand. According to Novelli et al. [47], effective communication means that transparent sources of information should be provided via different types of social platforms, including both private and public media. The research findings in this study indicated that domestic tourists do not find the mainstream information trustworthy when making travel decisions to safe tourism attractions during and after a pandemic. On the other hand, it is interesting to learn that “word-of-mouth” is likely to be the most trustworthy channel of information provision, which needs to be taken into consideration for some reasons. Fake news available on social media affects the efforts of local governments and the tourism industry to stimulate tourism demand and recovery during the pandemic [23,28,48]. This leads to fear of traveling in spite of the fact that green zone uninfected destinations are almost safe for visitors [21,34]. Therefore, information-based trust should be developed, and mainstream information need to ensure reliability during the pandemic. According to Fell [49], governments should play a key role toward improving trust through their transparent information provision to the public.

Previous experiences from other countries reconfirmed the determination of reliable sources of information which may affect tourists’ travel decision. A study by Nazneen et al. [50] reported that their research participants expressed their deep concern about the “new normal” information related to destinations after the pandemic and that they might just consider to travel after a year. This may stem from the psychological aspect of fear of traveling after long-lasting lockdowns and the fact that tourists may lack reliable sources of information [33,38].

This study also stresses the importance of the social involvement as a key determinant to the effective pandemic control and tourism revitalization at green zones. Evidently, the domestic tourists and local tourism enterprises in Vietnam are highly committed to the locally epidemic regulations, which contribute to guaranteeing disinfection at tourist attractions. In addition, the application of technology to report the mobility history of users allows people’s participation at the green zone to better control the pandemic while tourism activities normally take place.

5.3. Lessons Learnt for the Future

Although an abundance of tourism destinations around the world have been closed, many countries have taken advantage of green zones without a pandemic impact to maintain both the inbound and domestic tourism business. The findings in this research indicate that Vietnam has attempted to foster this genre of tourism development with a cautious approach. Obviously, it could be acknowledged that maintaining the tourism business during the pandemic, especially during the current challenges of the fourth wave of COVID-19, may lead to unprecedented disruption due to the significantly high risks of the transmissible Delta variant.

However, the experience from Vietnam and other countries suggests that green zone safe destinations can be seen as a “holy grail” to save the tourism industry during waves of COVID-19. Notably, Vietnam quickly recovered domestic tourism during the second and third waves of the pandemic. The findings in this study reconfirmed that the domestic tourism of Mekong Delta of Vietnam could achieve up to 60% of the industry capacity as long as key determinants, including disinfection at tourist attractions, reasonable prices of tourism services and tourists’ compliance with local regulations to prevent the pandemic, are highly committed among all stakeholders [6]. Therefore, the dual targets of epidemic prevention and tourism recovery could be achievable.

These unexpected achievements during the pandemic in Vietnam elicit a promising scenario that tourism resilience could be feasible, even in the current challenging stage of the fourth wave of the COVID-19. The failure of green zoning network between countries in the world has provided a valuable lesson from Vietnam. First of all, epidemic prevention regulations should be strict enough to minimize the potential risks of infected tourists after arrival to destinations. Evidence from Vietnam indicates that domestic tourism could be operated safely during the pandemic if all stakeholders are highly committed to disinfection regulation on-site. However, this may not be true for other tourism contexts when tourists appear not be collaborative with the authorities and the tourism attraction. A typical example for this ineffective collaboration is when tourists refused to wear masks and practice social distancing. In term of medical measures, international tourists with a “vaccine visa” may minimize the impact on uninfected tourist attractions. However, it is also acknowledged that removing all epidemic prevention regulations in the communities may lead to unexpected risks of spreading infection. Therefore, maintaining a strict epidemic prevention is critical for safe tourism destinations.

On the other hand, green zone tourism may not be a holy grail to save the tourism industry without cautions during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be argued that countries without tourism-dependent business may need to take the green zone initiative because of the limited revenue that tourism can bring. Poor collaboration among stakeholders, especially the tourists, may inhibit the effectiveness of this initiative. Obviously, tourists refusing to wear mask at crowded tourist attractions was a reality [27,32]. Apart from strict access to destinations, the medical capacity of the destination should be sufficient to ensure the minimization of risks for safe destinations. It is also critical for green zones to consider tourism opening during the pandemic only when safe destinations have all the required resources and capacity to cope with the pandemic’s uncontrollable impact.

Despite a few successful countries with green zone strategies, it implies some positive signals for tourism recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is interesting to learn from Thailand where some initial success from the green-zone initiative was achieved, namely the “Phuket sandbox”, which is known as an upgraded version of “tourism bubbles” in other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia or the Philippines. However, Thailand has issued effective pandemic prevention regulations which have saved their tourism business at safe destinations. According to Knight [22], Thailand had good reasons for the preliminary plan regarding “learning to live with COVID-19” to ease quasi-lockdown rules to foster tourism recovery in Phuket in October 2021. This originates from previous practice of the green zoning tourism initiative, namely the “No quarantine” Phuket sandbox. These efforts bring hope for Thai tourism resilience and global tourism recovery in the “new normal” condition.

The COVID-19 crisis in Vietnam was well controlled during the first and second waves of the pandemic [33]. This enabled the tourism destinations, especially the green zones, to rebound their tourism business activities as long as the tourism re-openings align with epidemic regulation and community involvement [51]. The findings in this study reveal the critical relationship between effective crisis management and the recovery of green zones’ tourism businesses. Although the Vietnamese central government has facilitated the green zones in reopening their local tourism business during the ongoing waves of the pandemic, it is likely that the top–down approach has yet to maximize the revitalization capacity of the tourism destination for some key reasons. First of all, the lack of devolution has made the local authorities unable to manage/control the pandemic and promote tourism recovery in their own way which suits their local pandemic context. The majority of local tourism department officials believe that green zones’ tourism businesses could recover more effectively if they are decentralized and given more authority in the decision-making process.

6. Conclusions and Implications

This research has highlighted the potential of a tourism destination as a green zone which could effectively respond to the pandemic and attain encouraging tourism recovery during and after the crisis. Despite the serious impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic tourism recovery in the examined case study indicates that a green zone could adapt well to the disaster in a flexible way while the necessary transformation and collaboration at the organizational and local government levels might facilitate the destination revitalization in the intermediate and long-term response.

In order to stimulate the domestic tourism demand, some key players, including the government at all levels, destination managers, and other stakeholders in the tourism sectors are found to be critical for the successful re-opening of the local tourism business. The leading role of the central and local government may determine the effectiveness of the epidemic prevention at tourism destinations and the recovery of the local tourism industry. The findings suggest that the central government may consider empowering the local government at green zones by decentralizing the authority in local decision-making processes to better foster tourism destination recovery. In addition, the active involvement and collaboration among other key stakeholders also affect the destination response and recovery in both the short and long term.

In term of the organizational resilience, the tourism enterprises should be more adaptive to the ongoing pandemic by transforming their flexible but creative operation practice. A wide range of adaptive transformation measures which were initiated actively contributed to enhance the opportunities to overcome the challenges facing the local enterprises in the examined case study. The findings also recommend a priority for domestic tourism recovery for the tourism destinations with good medical resources and capacity. Importantly, the role of trustworthy communication is highlighted since trustworthy sources of information affect the oriented business plan of the tourism industry. Apart from key factors regarding the preparedness, the instant response and adaptive transformation in term of crisis management at organizational level, the change in mindset toward pandemic prevention also orients the tourism industry to prepare psychologically to co-living with the COVID-19 pandemic waves. Despite the encouraging recovery of the green zone’s tourism reopening, the central government might consider facilitating the tourism operation of other non-green zones, where the impact of COVID-19 has been put under control. In this sense, the concept green zone could be seen from the local perspective in order to suit the specific demand of each green zone.

Importantly, the valuable experience from Can Tho as a green zone suggests a cautious compliance related to the disease prevention regulations, effective collaboration among key stakeholders and the enhancement of the local medical resources to better prepare for all potential scenarios during the pandemic crisis. Moreover, the study also stresses the importance of financial support to save the tourism sector and contribute to the success of the local tourism recovery. According to WTO [2], the world tourism industry might be able to recover by 2024, so the green zones need to take leading role in rebounding their local tourism business in a visionary and sustainable way.

Theoretically, this study provides some key contributions to the literature related to the COVID-19 pandemic consequences on disaster crisis management and destination recovery from multi-stakeholders’ perspectives. The study added to a better understanding of key factors and players that influence the destination recovery in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of Vietnam’s tourism industry, governments at all levels play a pivotal and leading role, while the security of the local healthcare system and vaccination rate are decisive to the success of the domestic re-opening. In addition, the study provides insight into the importance of stakeholders’ involvement and effective collaboration during staged crisis management. Finally, this research also suggests a framework to better deal with the global pandemic impact and tourism destination revitalization. Practically, this study has highlighted several important implications for the current tourism industry and policy practice. The findings in this study indicate that green zones may not be a holy grail but at least an effective choice for destination recovery during lingering pandemic waves and probably ongoing crisis. Lessons learnt from the case study examined in Vietnam suggest that governments may encourage their green zones to re-open the tourism business activities instead of implementing long-term shutdown. Moreover, this study also strengthens destination managers’ belief and confidence to achieve tourism recovery in the short term and for future waves of the pandemic. Importantly, the experience of destination crisis management as discussed in this study also enables the tourism business providers to better tailor their tourism products and services in a way that meets the tourists’ travel demand and minimizes the risk-related impact. In term of tourism management, this study provides a benchmark for tourism policy makers to better control the pandemic impact and initiate a special mechanism for green zones to continue rebounding the local tourism businesses against the ongoing impact of COVID-19 waves in the future.

Though this research provides both theoretical and practical implications concerning the response of green zones to the COVID-19 pandemic impact and the recovery process of the local tourism business during the waves of the pandemic, there remains some room available for future research. This research was conducted in one selected green zone, so potential studies may further examine or compare the effectiveness of tourism between green-zone and non-green-zone destinations. Instead of examining successful green zones in coping with the pandemic, other studies may investigate why many green zones are unsuccessfully resilient to pandemic waves. Finally, by employing a mixed-method approach, potential research may investigate the research phenomenon from other perspectives (e.g., local people or tourists) to shed light on stakeholders’ involvement and participation in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and tourism destination revitalization.