In an interview granted to the Border Guard Newspaper, Anh noted that tourism businesses should focus on attracting a broader number of international visitors around the world. He explained that while most of the 100 million Vietnamese people choose to take a trip on weekends, holidays, festivals, or summertime, seven billion people from countries around the world travel all year round. The cool weather in the Southwestern region is one of the favorable conditions for year-around tourism activities.
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Tourists at Vinh Xuong International Border Gate |
As a person who has been working in the sector for more than 40 years, the Chairman of the Management Board of Viet Excursions evaluated that each province and city has distinctive characteristics and tourism resources. For example, Ca Mau province has Ca Mau Cape. While Tra Vinh province has 55 Khmer pagodas, other provinces in the Southern region have only a few. Dong Thap is distinguished from other localities with the Relic Site of Nguyen Sinh Sac (President Ho Chi Minh's father). Can Tho has Cai Rang floating market, and Bac Lieu is famous for being the cradle of amateur folk music. The above-mentioned characteristics are seen as a premise for provinces and cities to develop tourism products.
According to Anh, floating market is a special trading form of the people in the Mekong Delta region, and provinces having such unique market model should make the most of them to lure and keep visitors.
Viet Excursions’ leader also emphasized that localities should avoid copying tourism products, but focus on exploiting and integrating their specific cultural values, history, customs, and cultural practices to their products and services. He highlighted diverse tourism products in the Mekong Delta region. According to him, foreign tourists are interested in experiencing traveling by luxury cruises on the Mekong River. Normally, cruises pick up passengers at Saigon, My Tho, or Cai Be port. A boat tour on the river usually lasts for a couple day or one week.
Meanwhile, some travel agents choose to pick up passengers in Can Tho port or Long Xuyen, Chau Doc of An Giang province. The most wonderful thing is that the Vietnam-Cambodia river border section is the widest and deepest in the Mekong River, allowing large ships with capacity of from 100 to 250 passengers to pass through Vinh Xuong International Border Gate in An Giang and Thuong Phuoc International Border Gate in Dong Thap. After cruises reach Cambodia’s Phnom Penh, passengers are transferred to small boats to tour other provinces of Cambodia. When returning to Vietnam, the cruises will welcome a large number of European, American, Australian tourists who travel to Cambodia by plane or by bus from Thailand and Laos.
Anh evaluated that the cross-border river tour has many profound meanings since it not only offers tourists an opportunity to enjoy the unique beauty of the majestic river, but also strengthen friendship between people living along the borderline and sharing the same Mekong River.
Source: Baobienphong
Translated by Tran Hoai