Eight Northeast provinces participate in the HCM City Tourism Festival from April 6-9 to promote the region’s tourism potential and strengthen travel linkages with the city. VNS Photo

HCM City, North-east region promote tourism linkages

HCM CITY — Tourism cooperation between HCM City and eight Northeast provinces has yielded positive results in the last two years, tourism authorities said.

The tourism cooperation with HCM City has helped the region expand its markets and boost the number of tourists from HCM and other southern cities and provinces visiting the region, said Nguyễn Đăng Bình, chairman of Bắc Kạn Province’s People’s Committee.

The Northeast provinces have set targets of sustainable tourism development and strengthening linkages with localities in the upcoming years, he recently told a conference on tourism promotion in the city .

The Northeast region and HCM City received more than 13 million tourists, including more than 700,000 foreign tourists, who travelled under the tourism linkage programmes in the first quarter of this year, he added.

The region, comprising Bắc Kạn, Bắc Giang, Cao Bằng, Lạng Sơn, Thái Nguyên, Tuyên Quang, Vĩnh Phúc and Quảng Ninh provinces, is home to nearly 30 ethnic groups, each of which has its own unique cultural identity, more than 2,000 cultural and historical heritages and many beautiful natural landscapes.

Nguyễn Đông Hòa, deputy general director of Saigontourist Group, said traffic infrastructure in the Northeast region needs to be improved to boost tourism development.

For long-term development, the Northeast provinces need to cooperate to develop inter-regional travel products and strengthen tie-ups with travel firms to develop unique travel products in the region, Hòa said.

The tourism cooperation for the 2020–2025 period between HCM City and the Northwest provinces is aimed at realising the tourism potential of individual localities and create more unique travel products to attract tourists. — VNS