HCMC doubles promotion fund for tourism

      The country’s travel hub of HCMC this year will spend around VND9 billion, or US$600,000, on tourism promotion activities, twice compared to the last year’s budget, an official said.
La Quoc Khanh, deputy director of the city’s department of culture, sport and tourism, said that the city’s tourism needed a bigger budget on activities to help the sector overcome a decline in international tourist arrivals. He said much of the fund would be spent on developing more products.
“However, most of the budget will be used for developing products instead of carrying out marketing activities only,” he said.
In particular, the city this year will restart two tourism development plans. One is to develop Pham Ngu Lao Quarter in District 1 into a special tourist rendezvous for international travelers, especially backpackers, and the other is to develop river tourism.
“The city’s government has approved our department’s proposal to carry out these two projects. We will spend around VND900 million on the plans,” Khanh said.
Of projects to develop tourism products, the Saigon - 100 Exciting program will receive a budget of VND2.7 billion for development. The program is to introduce 100 preferred things, services and tourist destinations in the city selected from ten different sub-sectors in the hospitality industry.
The program will be first introduced to international visitors on the occasion of the international travel exhibition in HCMC this October.
Khanh said the international exhibition is the biggest promotion event for the inbound sector that the department was focusing on in the rest of the year. The city received only some 1.33 million international visitors in the first half and expects the total number this year to fall 10% from last year’s figure of 2.8 million.
While international visitor arrivals fell in the first half, the number of domestic travelers increased impressively, and thus requires further support, he said.
To attract domestic tourists to HCMC, the department will make promotion trips in Hanoi, Halong and the Mekong Delta provinces of Tien Giang and An Giang to invite guests to HCMC.