Suối Tiên Theme Park in HCM City packed with visitors during the National Day holidays.  VNA/VNS Photo

HCM CITY — HCM City received hundreds of thousands of visitors during the National Day holidays, according to its Department of Tourism.

Domestic tourism continued to lead the sector’s revival, with HCM City remaining the top destination for local travellers in 2022, a study of travel trends this summer by online digital travel platform Agoda found.

It was followed by Đà Nẵng, Hà Nội, Vũng Tàu, Đà Lạt, Nha Trang, Phú Quốc, Hạ Long, Hội An, and Phan Thiết.

Beach destinations dominated the list as the country sweltered through a heatwave.

In HCM City, people visited the usual tourist attractions and amusement parks, with the numbers estimated at 920,000 domestic and 32,484 international guests.

Nguyễn Thị Ánh Hoa, director of the Department of Tourism, said visitors’ top activities include sightseeing, mostly of historic sites and museums, and shopping.

New tourism offerings are an attraction, she said.

To revive tourism following the end of COVID, her department has been co-ordinating with travel firms to develop intra-city and river-based tours.

It is offering incentives to boost MICE tourism (meeting, incentive, convention, exhibition), and ongoing tourism stimulus programmes will continue for the rest of the year.

More than 70 per cent of travel businesses have fully resumed operations and around 20 others have applied for a new licence.

The average occupancy rate at three-, four- and five-star hotels in the city was 75 per cent during the holidays.

Park Hyatt Saigon reported an 80-85 per cent rate while Sheraton Saigon reported 85-90 per cent.

A Tourism Cuisine Culture Festival held in Củ Chi District from September 1 to 4 attracted more than 25,000 visitors.

The festival is an opportunity to promote the cultural identity, traditional values, and tourist attractions of Củ Chi District to visitors and help fulfil its tourism potential.

The district’s attractions include the Bến Dược Tunnel, Bến Dược Memorial Temple, a memorial house for Vietnamese Heroic Mother Nguyễn Thị Rành, a high-tech agricultural zone, and fruit gardens in Trung An Commune.

Shopping malls and supermarkets like Emart Gò Vấp, MM Mega Market, Vincom, GigaMall, and Aeon received large numbers of shoppers estimated at 15-50 percent more than on normal days.

Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport handled a total of 204,000 passengers during during the holidays.

The airport co-ordinated with carriers and related agencies and deployed over 300 volunteers to regulate traffic and ensure safety and security on the streets.

More than 1,100 buses with over 77,000 passengers plied between the airport and Eastern Coach Station in Bình Thạnh District during the holidays.

Popular amusement sites and tourist attractions such as Suối Tiên Theme Park, the zoo, Đầm Sen Cultural Park, Áo Dài Museum, and the Củ Chi [guerrilla warfare] Tunnels saw an influx of visitors.

Bùi Thị Tố Trinh, deputy general director of Suối Tiên Theme Park, said at least 40,000 visitors came during the holidays.

The theme park has invested in upgrades to infrastructure, planted more trees and launched a farm which offers hands-on experience in farming and high-tech planting technologies, she added.

Around 170,000 people visited the Củ Chi Tunnels while 25,000 checked out the zoo.

The city has dozens of tourism programmes in place and will add before the end of the year.

Thanks to these, in the year-to-date more than 16.77 million domestic tourists visited the city, accounting for 84 per cent of the year’s target.

Tourism revenues in the period are estimated at VNĐ74.5 trillion (US$3.3 billion) or 93 per cent of the target. – VNS