HCMC Expands Tourism Cooperation

Located in the country's key southern economic zone, tourism is one of Ho Chi Minh City's (HCMC) strength besides its rapid economic growth in trade and industry. To encourage foreign currency spending, the city authority has paid attention to its cooperation with other provinces across the country to foster tourism development.
Making use of favorable conditions to develop various kinds of tourism such as eco-tourism, historical tourism and water-river based tourism, Ho Chi Minh City has acted as an entry-point for large numbers of foreign tourists to Vietnam. The cooperation in tourism development has generated benefits for both Ho Chi Minh City and other provinces. For the past few years, Ho Chi Minh City has fostered its cooperation in tourism development with Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Lam Dong provinces.
La Quoc Khanh- the Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism said that Vietnamese tourism is targeting cooperation for further development, to enhance tourism, exploit effectively local potential and advantages and develop diverse product chains to attract local and foreign visitors. In addition, tourism cooperation has created an opportunity for businesses specializing in culture, sport and tourism to cooperate and call for investment.
Ho Chi Minh City has cooperated with Binh Thuan and Lam Dong to establish a tourism triangle to jointly develop, invest and promote products based on each province's advantage. Lam Dong has attracted more than 100 investment projects from Ho Chi Minh City with total registered capital of VND29,000 billion. For the first nine months in 2010 alone, six projects have been invested in Lam Dong with total registered capital of VND1,234 billion from Ho Chi Minh City investors. Meanwhile, Binh Thuan has welcomed 253 projects from Ho Chi Minh City with total capital of VND37,039 billion.
In addition, HCMC has made effort to enhance its cooperation with Bac Lieu, Binh Duong, Vung Tau and An Giang to diversify tourism products and foster tourism strengths such as eco-tourism, rest and relaxation tourism and more recently, river based tourism. Many tourism promotion campaigns have been held in Ho Chi Minh City such as roadshows in Australia, Thailand and Malaysia. Provincial tourist attractions have been published in the Ho Chi Minh City’s Tourism Journal. Beside the cooperation with local provinces, Ho Chi Minh City has expanded cooperation with other countries such as Cambodia to bring more benefit to its tourism sector. It has also entered a partnership with local and foreign airlines to increase flight frequencies and reduce airfares.
Nguyen Quoc Ky- the General Director of Vietravel said that regional cooperation has been significant to tourism development. Ho Chi Minh City and other provinces in Vietnam should join to expand their network and sell their tourism products locally and internationally including in ASEAN and abroad. The tourism strength of each province/region will be more effectively exploited through cooperation. Therefore, tourists will have more choice thanks to the market expansion and better quality products through cooperation.
The International Tourism Exhibition (ITE) which has been held successfully for the past six years has proved an effective tourism promotional tool for Ho Chi Minh City. It has not only generated benefits for Ho Chi Minh City and offered an opportunity for other provinces to join in a series of events such as tourism day or international tourism exhibitions. With 155 representatives from tourist agents, leading tour managers of 35 countries, 9 international tourism promotion organizations such as India, Cambodia, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, China and Turkey, ITE 2010 has created a great opportunity for HCMC and Vietnam as a whole to develop ideal tourism attraction for foreign tourists./.