Originally published in Hudson, S. & Hudson, L. (2017). Marketing in action: The ethics of portraying war as a tourism attraction in Vietnam. In M. Waters (Ed.), Marketing for tourism, hospitality & events: A global & digital approach. (pp. 358-361). London, UK: SAGE Publications, Ltd. ISBN: 9781473926639.

War tourism has been around for hundreds of years. Admiral Lord Nelson's battleship, The Victory, for example, has long been a successful tourist attraction drawing millions of visitors to Portsmouth, England. Heroes from the American Civil War have likewise been venerated in the US with statues, artifacts, memorials and reenactments of their battles, attracting tourists in their thousands. The eerie reminders of World War II atrocities at Belsen and Auschwitz are still major tourism destinations as well as the city of Hiroshima in Japan and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. However, it is only more recently that tourism marketers in Vietnam have identified the cultural value of their war-ravaged country in terms of an attraction to encourage more overseas visitors. Having suffered more than 30 years of war (first with France, then with the US, and finally civil war), Vietnam has been engaged in renovation and rebuilding since its 1987 economic reform policy, doi moi. The reform promoted open-door policies and a free market economy. Through the establishment of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), war tourism has been actively encouraged and targeted as part of a government and private sector marketing plan. VNAT is focusing on increasing state management of tourism, strategic planning and forecasting, human resource training, and the easing of formalities within the industry. The intention is to attract overseas investment and develop tourism as a dominant foreign exchange earner for Vietnam.

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