Awakening the Potential of the “Smokeless Industry”

Owning a prime gateway location along with beautiful natural landscapes and a rich cultural identity, Xuan Hoa ward is drastically restructuring its economy to let the “smokeless industry” take off. This is a strategic move aimed at shaping Xuan Hoa into a commercial - service - tourism hub of the province for the 2026 - 2030 period, while elevating the Dai Lai Lake area into a national tourism center.

Dai Lai Lake - an ideal destination for eco-tourism and resorts.

Situated in a strategic gateway location adjacent to Hanoi Capital, Xuan Hoa ward is rising to become a key commercial - service - tourism hub. Following boundary adjustments, Xuan Hoa possesses a sprawling development space of 96 km2 with a population size of over 55,000 people. The area converges a deeply layered tourism ecosystem that harmoniously combines the green hues of Ngoc Thanh forest, a heroic revolutionary war zone, and the dynamism of a university town. Within this picture, Dai Lai Lake stands out thanks to its vast water surface advantage and temperate climate. This is a “magnet” attracting investment flows into world-class resort complexes, golf courses, and luxury resorts. In the regional development vision, Xuan Hoa holds a core link role connecting the eco-cultural tourism chains of Tam Dao, Tay Thien, Hoa Binh Lake, and Phu Tho.

However, according to assessments by local party committees and authorities, the potential and advantages have not yet been exploited to their full stature. Tourism infrastructure lacks synchronization, products are not yet diverse, and promotional efforts have not been truly effective. Models of community tourism, homestays, and farmstays develop on a small scale and lack connectivity. Consequently, tourists' length of stay is short, turnover is rapid, and spending levels remain modest.

To solve this problem, Xuan Hoa is restructuring its economy, strongly awakening the internal strength of the service sector. Identifying tourism as a breakthrough step, the local party committees and authorities have vigorously innovated their mindset, viewing this as an integrated economic sector geared toward multi-objective development—simultaneously exploiting natural advantages, preserving culture, protecting the environment, and improving people’s livelihoods. The locality has issued a thematic resolution and a tourism-service development project to serve as a long-term action plan, determined to eliminate short-term tenure mindsets or temporary movements.

The primary focus at present is synchronous planning and infrastructure investment. Spine roads around Dai Lai Lake and axes connecting the ward’s center, tourist areas, and residential areas are being intensively widened and upgraded. In parallel, the locality is completing systems for electricity, water, telecommunications, parking lots, public lighting, public Wi-Fi, and a tourism information center. The principle of infrastructure staying one step ahead has cleared investment flows for projects.

To date, numerous large-scale resort and service complexes have taken shape in the area, such as the Dai Lai Tourism Area, Flamingo Dai Lai Resort, Bim Group Thanh Xuan, Dai Lai Golf Course, along with experiential homestay and farmstay systems in Ngoc Thanh. Stimulus activities through events like the Dai Lai Festival have helped the tourism market flourish. The entire ward currently hosts over 460 enterprises and nearly 2,000 individual business households in operation.

Mr. Cao Ba Tuan - Director of the Truong Vuong Commercial Hotel Service Private Enterprise shared: Xuan Hoa boasts a prime location alongside a massive pool of potential customers from nearby university networks, industrial parks, and transit travelers from Hanoi. Recognizing this superior advantage, his enterprise has invested in high-quality hotel and service infrastructure here. Throughout the investment and business process, the enterprise has always received close support from the government in clearing administrative bottlenecks, assisting with site clearance, and ensuring security. “The openness of the government apparatus is the most solid launching pad for businesses to feel secure in staying, expanding their scale, and contributing to positioning the local tourism brand,” Mr. Tuan affirmed.

From an investor’s perspective, Mr. Tuan suggested that parallel to completing infrastructure, Xuan Hoa should focus on building unique tourism products with distinct identities. The locality should also maximize the advantages of Dai Lai Lake and green forests to develop eco-tourism and luxury wellness retreats combined with community experiences. Restoring revolutionary historical relics and forming the “Dai Lai - Ngoc Thanh - Xuan Hoa” connection route will help diversify experiences for tourists. Meanwhile, night economy models like walking streets, culinary markets, or Soong co cultural performances need to be organized methodically to create sustainable livelihoods for local residents.

Comrade Dao Anh Dung, Chairman of the Xuan Hoa Ward People’s Committee, affirmed: The local strategic goal for the 2026 - 2030 period is to build Xuan Hoa into a central urban area for commerce, services, and tourism of the province; particularly collaborating to build Dai Lai Lake into a national tourism center in the spirit of the Provincial Party Committee’s Congress Resolution.

To realize this vision, the ward is concentrating heavily on three core pillars. Accelerating administrative reform coupled with comprehensive digital transformation to provide maximum support to enterprises and business households, creating an open and transparent investment environment. Actively advising higher authorities to attract strategic investors to build multi-functional entertainment, recreation, and cultural complexes; harmoniously connecting eco-tourism with university town experiential tourism. Focusing on elevating commercial civilization culture, stepping up propaganda and promotion, and collaborating to train local human resources in a professional, hospitable manner, equipping residents with service skills so they can truly participate in the supply chain.

Alongside these efforts, the locality is striving to diversify tourism products by restoring and refreshing the Ngoc Thanh Love Market model to construct a unique indigenous cultural space, deeply imbued with the cultural identity of the San Diu ethnic group. It is also actively coordinating with and attracting universities and research institutes based in the area to robustly develop school-experiential tourism and dynamic university town models, turning knowledge resources into a distinct competitive advantage for services. However, for Dai Lai tourism to take off on a national scale, Xuan Hoa petitions the province to prioritize funding to complete regionally connected transportation infrastructure. Concurrently, it requests support in linking inter-provincial tours and routes with major travel hubs to unleash visitor flows, realizing the aspiration for dynamic, green, and sustainable development.

Tran Tinh