Hanoi’s tourism sector is planning a number of activities to make breakthroughs and boost sustainable development with a focus on cultural tourism.

With thousands of years of history, Hanoi has a unique culture with various historical relic sites, festivals and trade villages, which are helping the city become more attractive to both domestic and foreign tourists.

A palanquin procession of Saint Chu Dong Tu to Chu Cu Van Temple in Gia Lam district of Hanoi.

Along with eco-tourism, resorts and entertainment centres, cultural tourism is also defined as a core pillar in the city’s tourism master plan until 2020 with a vision to 2030 and related projects.

The new Department of Tourism is also expected to help strengthen tourism management and promotion.

The city will organise a number of seminars between State management agencies and travel enterprises through the end of this year to update each other on their operational situations and popularise new policies while analysing the city’s tourism market and reviewing the number of accommodation facilities, transport firms and travel agents for better management.

Stronger public relations campaigns will also be held through mass media and a website on Hanoi tourism at hanoitourism.gov.vn, enabling tourists to search for information more easily.

A guidebook on local three to five-star hotels will also be published in five languages: Vietnamese, English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The city is set to take part in the Jata tourism fair in Japan and offer intensive tourism training to locals in a number of trade villages like Bat Trang, Van Phuc and Phu Vinh.

Some major projects will also be implemented to develop diverse tourism forms, including those to increase Hanoi’s tourism products from 2016-2020 with orientations to 2030, promote the Giong festival space in Gia Lam and Soc Son districts, and upgrade the Ba Vi-Suoi Hai area to a national tourism site by 2020.

In the first half of this year, the capital welcomed over 9.98 million visitors, a 3.38 percent rise year-on-year, including 1.53 million foreign arrivals, up 5 percent over the same period last year.

Source: VNA