Transforming Tourism: Our Project Circular Tourism Vietnam Launches Stakeholder Meetings With its picturesque landscapes, white sandy beaches, and impressive terrace rice fields, Vietnam has become a leading tourist destination. Yet, the same landscapes that enabled the tourism boom in the first place are facing the most challenges caused by this rapid growth. As one of the countries with the fastest growing tourism sector in the world, Vietnam is also a major contributor to marine plastic litter with approximately 730,000 tons of plastic waste going to the sea every year.* The outbreak of COVID-19 has reduced international tourist traffic to Vietnam leading to a decline in income of many tourism-related businesses and increasing unemployment rates. Around 66% of tourist agencies reduced their staff by half and about 20 % let their staff go completely**. However, the circumstances surrounding the pandemic also offer great opportunities to transform the industry into a sustainable and resilient one. So, how can this be done? In November 2021, the CSCP started the pilot project Circular Tourism Vietnam (Commencing Circularity, Transforming Tourism in Vietnam) to promote new pathways of social and environmental innovations through the integration of circular economy in the tourism sector. Supported by the TUI Care Foundation and in collaboration with the Vietnam Tourism Association (VITA), the project attempts to engage with tourism key stakeholders to identify national priorities and define strategies for a more sustainable and circular approach to tourism. The pilot project will engage with selected tourism start-ups and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through a Circularity Lab. The Lab seeks to introduce the concept of circular tourism and promote exchanges of ideas for sustainable, circular tourism products and services. Once identified and agreed upon, the ideas will be prototyped with local tourists and communities before turning them into products or services. Engaging with key stakeholders As one of the pilot activities, the project has organised two stakeholder meetings in Hanoi and in Hue City in December 2021. About 40 national, international and industry-specific stakeholders took part in the event, contributing to a lively discussion on circular tourism. “What we are doing at our hotel to reduce food waste is that we made a contract with a farmer cooperative. Every two days they would come to our hotel to pick up surplus food to use in their farms.”, noted Ms. Quyen from one of the hotels in Hue City. The Circular Tourism Vietnam project aims to help bring such best practices one step further, for example by supporting farmers to compost the waste they collect from restaurants and establish a farm-to-fork-to-farm circular concept. Out of the stakeholder meetings, the pilot project has already developed a concise action plan for circular tourism. Immediate actions that were identified and can be taken right away by the tourism actors include single-use plastic avoidance and the reduction of plastic and food waste. For further questions, please contact Kartika Anggraeni. *Thanh Hai, Truong and Vu, Nam. 2019 ** Quang, T.D., Tran, T.C., Tran, V.H., Nguyen, T.T., Nguyen, T.T., 2020 Photo by Kiril Dobrev on Unsplash.