Experts look for ways to bolster tourism in North Central region

As major cities of Vietnam, Hanoi and HCMC will promote tourism in the northern and central regions of the country.

The six North Central provinces need to cooperate with key localities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to attract more tourists and increase revenue.

Lan Chau Island in Cua Lo Town, Nghe An Province. Photos: nghean.gov.vn

This is key content discussed by more than 500 delegates from various ministries, international organizations and tourism businesses at a tourism forum, with the theme "Convergence of Quintessence – Enhanced Destination Experience", held in the central province of Nghe An early this month.

Nguyen Duc Trung, Chairman of Nghe An Provincial People’s Committee pointed out that the forum was an event marking an important and comprehensive turning point in the cooperation between Hanoi and HCMC with the provinces of Ninh Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh and Quang Tri, in which Nghe An played the role of a tourism connection center in the North Central region.

The cooperation between the region and Vietnam’s two major tourist hubs, Hanoi and HCMC, aims to exchange tourists and create investment attractions through key mechanisms and policies, which call for the participation of strategic investors in the tourism industry, and contribute to gradually modernizing and improving the quality of the tourism infrastructure system for the whole region.

Whether the tourism linkage among localities in the region is effective or not will depend on the efforts to harness the internal resources of each locality, thereby creating the great strength of the regional tourism linkage chain.

Truong Duc Hung, Deputy CEO of Saigontourist Group said it is necessary to promote connections between provinces in the region to form strong product clusters, create inter-regional itineraries and specialized products such as cultural tourism, ecotourism, sea tourism, as well as link with other industries such as railways, aviation, agriculture, and fisheries to create attractive product packages.

"It is necessary to have policies to promote investment in infrastructure connecting tourist destinations of the region, build synchronous and high-quality tourism technical facilities such as accommodation, entertainment, and sports facilities," he added.

Hung also suggested there should be a unified and synchronous training program to strengthen the capacity of local managers and enhance vocational and foreign language training for laborers in the tourism industry.

Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Doan Van Viet emphasized that localities need to work together in the application of science and technology, research, and application of green technologies by tourism enterprises in the North Central region. It is essential to boost the joint application of digital technology in tourism promotion and advertising, he said.

Delegates attend the signing ceremony.

Within the framework of the forum, a cooperation agreement on tourism development was signed among Hanoi, HCMC, and the North Central provinces for the 2022-2025 period along with an implementation plan of the cooperation activities during the 2022-23 period.

The signing ceremony of cooperation agreements on tourism development between tourism businesses from Hanoi, HCMC, and other localities also took place on the same day.

In 2022, Vietnam aimed to welcome 65 million visitors, including five million from abroad. The total revenue from the tourism industry is expected to be VND400 trillion (US$17.5 billion).