Harnessing the Potential of Slow Tourism in Vietnam: A Strategic Framework for Sustainable Development

This study presents a strategic analysis of slow tourism’s potential to foster sustainable development in Vietnam, a nation grappling with the paradox of a high-growth tourism model that threatens its core environmental and cultural assets. Moving beyond descriptive analysis, the research constructs a prescriptive framework for policymakers by employing a methodology that integrates a systematic literature review with a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. This evidence-based approach reveals that while Vietnam possesses immense cultural and natural capital for a high-value slow tourism sector, its development is constrained by significant internal weaknesses and a path-dependent policy environment favoring quantitative over qualitative metrics. The analysis identifies the infrastructure-sustainability dilemma and the paradox of authenticity as critical challenges. The resulting SWOT analysis generates actionable strategies designed to overcome this institutional inertia, proposing a shift from a development model predicated on maximizing tourist arrivals to one focused on maximizing local value creation and retention. This action-oriented framework provides a clear pathway for harnessing slow tourism as a catalyst for genuine and lasting sustainable development in Vietnam.