Vietnam’s tourism industry is focusing on developing heritage tours, the Vietnam Business Forum Magazine (VBF) has reported.
Vietnam
has more than 100 national parks and nature reserves, and approximately
40,000 tangible and intangible cultural heritages. The country also has
18 World Heritages recognised by UNESCO, including two natural
heritages, five cultural heritages, eight intangible cultural heritages
and three royal documents heritages.
The country possesses
rich natural resources and an ancient and durable culture forming its
national identity. These offer potential momentum for tourism
development. Vietnam’s tourism has formed outstanding destinations and
tours to attract visitors, namely the Northern Rectangle Hanoi- Ha Long
-NinhBinh -Hai Phong, the central chain Da Nang – Hue, the South Central
Coast with two focal points NhaTrang (Khanh Hoa province) and PhanThiet
(BinhThuan province), Ho Chi Minh City and neighbouring provinces in
the South, Da Lat (Lam Dong province) in the Central Highlands.
Along
with tying the most prominent cultural heritages to other destinations
in the tour system, Vietnam began investing in infrastructure and
improving tourism services. Vietnam also strengthens heritage tourism
branding.
Vietnam tourism development strategy to 2020 with the
vision to 2030 also sets out that Vietnam’s tourism, as a driving force
of economic development, needs to focus on building high quality,
unique, diverse and comprehensive tourism products; simultaneously,
clearly study the demands of target customers from different markets,
from which to create premium, high value tourism products, becoming a
popular competitive tourist brand regionally and internationally.
Until
now, Vietnam has initially exploited and successfully connected
cultural heritages and natural heritages to form tourism centres in the
area with comprehensive tourism products. National Tourism Year 2015 in
Thanh Hoa province with the theme “Connecting the World Heritages”, in
which the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will coordinate with
ThanhHoa to organise many activities, along with others held by Phu Tho,
Hanoi, Ninh Binh, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and
ThuaThien-Hue.
However, according to Nguyen Van Tuan, Director
General of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), what we
have done is only the first steps; we still have a long way to go. With
the theme “Connecting the World Heritages,” National Tourism Year 2015”
is expected to contribute to raising public awareness about tourism
development, and promote links between localities participating in this
event in order to promote tourism Year and attract investment for
tourism development in the region, as well as inter-regionally.
Vietnam is open and pro-active in the integration with the world
economy. In many countries in the ASEAN region, the connection and trade
among countries will be strengthened especially in 2015 when the
formation of common economic community facilitated trade, services and
development investment. Vietnam also follows that trend as it created
links for tourism development as well as regional and multi-national
destinations.
Vietnam has a regional connection programme “Three
countries – one destination” Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia, focusing on the
connection between landmarks, typical heritages of the three countries.
Recently,
Vietnam has also participated in the connection “Five nations – one
destination” including Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia-Myanmar-Thailand. This is a
typical pattern for the connection, boosting tourism development of
neighbouring countries in the Mekong region downstream.
By
participating in these programmes, countries including Vietnam will be
in a healthy competition on the basis of mutual benefit, and promote the
heritage values of the area. During the past years, Vietnam has focused
on promoting the heritage value for tourism development but results
achieved are not really impressive, even with world heritages. According
to experts, Vietnam Tourism lacks unique tourism areas and tourism
products compared with those in the region and the world. Tourism
efficiency is far lower than countries like Thailand and Singapore.
The
role of tourism enterprises are also important; therefore, there must
be a connection to raise people’s awareness about conserving and
promoting heritage values, increasing benefits of the community, tourism
businesses, from that promoting tourism development.-VNA