Communications built for sustainable scale: a platform's growth depends less on any single campaign, and more on partnerships across government, independent organisations, businesses, and communities that keep investing in that growth, drawn from my national and provincial tourism development work.

Scaling platforms

About the work

  • Vietnam's tourism sector runs on public platforms built and maintained at both the national and provincial level, each responsible for representing a destination's culture, infrastructure, and opportunity to the world. This case study spans two of them:

    (1) The Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board, where I worked as a Campaign & Content Manager on a national public-private partnership, coordinating the country’s National Authority of Tourism and Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism alongside partners such as the Swiss Sustainable Tourism Programme and the Animals Asia Foundation.

    (2) The provincial Hoi An Tourism Board, one of Vietnam's most internationally recognised heritage destinations, also a public-private partnership, where I was Managing Editor.

  • When I joined, both platforms had ambitions larger than their existing communications systems could support. They needed to reach international audiences, reflect a changing brand, work with multiple public and private stakeholders, and produce a steady flow of credible content across website, social media, newsletters, press coverage, and industry events. 

    At the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board, vietnam.travel had just launched. The task was scaling a platform from the ground up, building an evergreen content library and establishing a global audience. As Campaign & Content Manager, I helped create flagship campaigns, oversaw editorial, video, and photography content production, introduced content pillars for the platform to build on, and managed cross-sector partnerships including sponsors and government agencies. Our team was also responsible for the communications of the Vietnam Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, drawing global attention to one of Vietnam’s most successful participations at World Expo. 

    At the Hoi An (Quang Nam) Tourism Board, I took over as the freshly established visitquangnam.com was ready to grow. As Managing Editor, I led content strategy and production to widen its digital presence and expand into two new language markets. I also worked directly with local communities, connecting government, private sector, and non-profit partners to promote sustainable practices, reinforcing Hoi An's standing as a leading green destination in the region. That collaboration built trust between stakeholders while running a leaner, more efficient editorial operation.

    Both projects follow the same underlying approach to scaling: build a content engine to outlast any single campaign, and a coalition of stakeholders invested in keeping the platform growing. I remained at both projects until completion and government handover. 

  • In October 2020, the #VietnamNOW campaign placed a critical tourism spot on CNN at a point when international arrivals had collapsed 80% year-on-year. By handover in May 2021, vietnam.travel was the 4th fastest-growing tourism website in the region, having tripled traffic in two years and jumped more than 290,000 places, the highest growth rate in Southeast Asia. Vietnam went on to be named Asia's Leading Tourist Board at the World Travel Awards in both 2021 and 2022.

    As for the Hoi An Tourism Board, traffic doubled across all platforms, engagement and collaboration with the private sector reached a record high, and annual spend fell by 15%. The board was named Asia's Leading Regional Tourist Board at the 2024 World Travel Awards, while Hoi An itself took the Asia's Leading Culture City Destination title for the fifth consecutive year.

  • Both platforms still run today, well beyond the point of handover without depending on any one team. The Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board's systems and partnerships continued under government ownership after this work concluded, and the Hoi An platform did the same. But the more important achievement lies in the infrastructure which made that possible: government, private, and non-profit partners working together to create lasting impact. 

    At both projects, I fostered trust and collaboration between stakeholders around a shared commitment to sustainable growth. For development work, I do believe that's the legacy that matters most.