Balancing profit, heritage and sustainability in Viet Nam's smokeless industry: a governance framework for tourism-led development

This article examines the development of Viet Nam's “smokeless industry” in the context of the country's transition toward quality-based, innovation-driven and identity-oriented growth. Using policy analysis, document review and an interdisciplinary systems approach, the study develops a Profit - Heritage - Sustainability (P-H-S) framework to explain why tourism growth cannot be governed only through visitor volume or short-term revenue. The evidence shows that Viet Nam's post-pandemic recovery has been strong, but the expansion of heritage tourism continues to generate tensions among commercialization, carrying capacity, authenticity and benefit sharing. The article therefore proposes a governance framework combining four core principles, three groups of policy tools, an evaluation indicator system and a multi-stakeholder coordination mechanism. The central argument is that tourism-led development is sustainable only when profit is treated as a means to finance heritage preservation and community welfare rather than as an isolated end.