The conference to promote and develop Northwest typical tourism products

PTO- On December 16th, in Lao Cai province, the Steering Committee of the Northwest in coordination with the Commission Economic Affairs, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Lao Cai province held a conference to promote and jointly develop northwest typical tourism products. Mr. Nguyen Van Binh, Politburo member, Chairman of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Economic Affairs, Head of Steering Committee for the Northwestern region chaired the conference. Mr. Ha Ke San, member of the Standing Board of the Provincial Party Committee, Vice-Chairman of Phu Tho Provincial People’s Committee and representative of Phu Tho Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism also attended the conference.

Northwest region has a great difference in climate, terrain, landscape as well as cultural identity, creating attractive experience values. These are the advantages that create the Northwest"s own tourism competition as well as the dramatical growth of the number of tourists recently. In 2017, Northwest region has welcomed more than 2 million international tourists and over 15 million domestic tourists, the number of tourism accommodation has accounted for about 10% of establisments nationwide. This result is thank to the promotion and development solutions of tourism product such as: Developing the spiritual tours linking 3 provinces of Lao Cai - Yen Bai - Phu Tho; cooperative program of 8 Northwest provinces. In particular, these activities have been strongly implemented in the series of events of the National Tourism Year 2017. However, the current experience on tourism development of each province in the region is different, making the cooperation, promotion and development in the whole region difficult. In addition, the conditions of infrastructure, resources and investment attraction ability as well as the quality of tourism human resources is still limited.

Addressing at the conference, Mr. Ha Ke San, member of the Standing Board of the Provincial Party Committee, Vice-Chairman of Phu Tho Provincial People’s Committee has stated the potentials, advantages as well as the orientation of Phu Tho province in developing each type of tourism, such as spiritual culture tours; tourism combining entertainment and experience tour, community tourism. He emphasized that each province need to identify the key tourist market, which is suitable with the advantages to build typical tourism products; at the same time, researching and developing inter-regional tourism products and increasing competitive advantage. Vice Chairman of Phu Tho provincial People"s Committee Ha Ke San wishes to continue receiving the attention of the central ministries and sectors to develop tourism activities and require travel companies continue to strengthen cooperation with Phu Tho and other provinces in the region to build tourism products, actively contributing to build the "Tourism Northwest" brand as an attractive destination.

Conclusing at the conference, Mr. Nguyen Van Binh, Politburo member, Chairman of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Economic Affairs, Head of Steering Committee for the Northwestern region highly appreciated the efforts of localities in the building and development of typical tourism products of the region. At the same time, the Northwest region has great potential for tourism development, which directly helps the local people reduce poverty sustainably. Therefore, it need to develop tourism into an integrated service industry to form new typical tourism products of Northwest region by strong and synchronous solutions in tourism cooperation and development.

In the coming time, in order to promote cooperation and linkage in the Northwest tourism sector, it is necessary to deploy vigorously and effectively the Politburo"s Conclusion 26 to boost socio-economic development and ensure effective defence and security in the northern midland and mountainous region by 2020. Focusing on developing transport infrastructure and training human resources for the Northwest region for socio-economic development in general and tourism development in particular; building the master plan on tourism development in the northwestern region and each sub-region up to 2030; setting up a Tourism Steering Committee for the whole region; Reviewing, evaluating and identifying sub-regions for tourism development in the Northwest and developing a subregional linkage mechanism; diversifying bilateral and multilateral tourism development programs; forming a number of tourist cities, major tourist centers in the region to attract and promote regional tourism with other regions.

On this occasion, representatives from Phu Tho, Lao Cai, Yen Bai and Ha Giang province signed a commitment to promote tourism products in the northwest region with representatives of Viet Travel.

Quoc Dai