An overview of the talks in Lạng Sơn Province on September 19. — VNA/VNS Photo

LẠNG SƠN — Việt Nam and China have agreed to tap cultural and tourism potential and values to promote cross-border tourism during border tourism development talks last weekend.

The event was jointly organised by the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Việt Nam's Lạng Sơn Province and the Department of Culture and Tourism of China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Trần Thị Bích Hạnh, Deputy Director of the Lạng Sơn Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, stressed that Lạng Sơn and Guangxi share a border and a traditional friendship. In recent years, border tourism cooperation has emerged as a highlight and an important bridge for promoting people-to-people exchanges between the two sides.

The talks provided an opportunity for the two sides to discuss and set orientations for developing distinctive and complementary tourism products, improving the quality and value of tourism programmes to protect tourists’ legitimate interests, jointly organising events in border areas, and removing difficulties related to entry and exit procedures.

Hạnh said Lạng Sơn and Guangxi both boast rich and diverse tourism resources spanning culture, history, ecology and leisure. She expressed her hope to connect these resources into attractive cross-border tourism routes and destinations while developing caravan tours, cultural and spiritual tourism, and border shopping tourism.

The goal is to develop tourism products that are not only distinctive and novel but also make effective use of each side’s advantages, the official added.

Gao Lin, Vice Chairwoman and Secretary General of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Tourism Association, suggested that tourism associations, tourism companies and travel agencies in the two sides capitalise on information channels, particularly tourism association networks, to widely introduce and promote their respective tourism potential, strengths and products.

The two sides should develop more cross-border tours and routes to promote tourism potential and reach a broader tourist market, she said.

At the talks, tourism associations, companies and agencies from Lạng Sơn and Guangxi proposed that authorities on both sides reform and simplify administrative procedures, apply digital technologies and minimise waiting times at border gates, thereby creating the most convenient conditions possible for tourists travelling across the border.

Lạng Sơn welcomed around 269,000 international visitors in the first nine months of 2026, many of whom came from Guangxi, China, according to its Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism. — VNA/VNS