Trần Hữu Lộc, director of Hương Quê Eco-tourism Area in An Minh District. VNS Photo Văn Châu

An Biên and An Minh districts in Kiên Giang Province are collectively known as the Miệt Thứ region, possessing a large coastal mangrove ecosystem with high biodiversity suitable for ecotourism development. However, the area's tourism potential is currently being left behind by various factors.

Trần Hữu Lộc, director of the Hương Quê Eco-tourism Area in An Minh District, shares his views about the potential and challenges of tourism development in Miệt Thứ with Việt Nam News.

How do you evaluate the tourism development potential of Miệt Thứ region?

It can be said that tourism in the Miệt Thứ region in Kiên Giang Province is being neglected even though this land possesses a lot of potential to develop tourism associated with nature, a type of tourism that is increasingly popular and is becoming a trend worldwide.

An Biên and An Minh districts have wild natural beauty and multiple unique cultural festivals that are difficult to find elsewhere.

An Biên can exploit a form of cruising on the Cái Lớn River, listening to Đờn ca tài tử (southern folk music) combined with sightseeing, enjoying local speciality products, exploring forests and seas and participating in local festivals.

Đờn ca tài tử originated in southern Việt Nam 100 years ago. It is the prototype for vọng cổ [nostalgic tunes] and cải lương [reformer opera], which is often performed during festivals and special occasions in the Mekong Delta provinces of Cần Thơ, Vĩnh Long, Bạc Liêu, Kiên Giang, and Cà Mau.

The music is performed at traditional festivals, weddings and death anniversaries in the region.

In 2013, the music was recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

Currently, the locality has developed tourism services to serve domestic and foreign tourists.

However, currently tourism products in these two localities are mainly developed spontaneously, unprofessionally, mainly by local residents, not connected with travel companies, lacking information about products and accompanying services, and transport is still difficult.

According to you, how should we build products and exploit tourism in Miệt Thứ?

Exploiting the advantages of tourism development in the two districts of An Biên and An Minh is still difficult.

There are many reasons for this, such as narrow provincial roads; some routes to potential tourism development sites have not been invested in and expanded.

There is also a lack of restaurants, hotels, entertainment and shopping areas to serve the needs of tourists.

There have not been built, trained and developed local human resources to serve local tourism activities and the budget for tourism development is still limited.

To solve the problem of tourism in An Biên and An Minh districts, in addition to the need to soon plan tourism development areas associated with the overall planning of local socio-economic development, local authorities need to determine which types of tourism are strong and specific to have investment plans, strengthen tourism promotion, link tourism centres inside and outside the province to form tours and routes to local tourist destinations.

Tourists experience hunting wild honey bees in An Biên District. VNS Photo Văn Châu

For example, An Minh District can let households take advantage of forest areas to develop ecotourism first. Visitors there will be able to experience hunting wild honey bees and fishing under the guidance of experienced locals and enjoy cuisine outdoor in the forest.

It can also organise day tours to explore the poetic Trẹm River and experience making cajuput bark pictures.

To be able to connect better with big cities like HCM City and Hà Nội, the locality needs a leading enterprise to organise and lead the formation and development of tourism services.

The role of local authorities and Kiên Giang Province plays a very important role in promoting communication to attract tourists to the localities.

Those localities can take advantage of stories about local history and culture to create information content about the land and people of Miệt Thứ for outsiders.

In the long term, local businesses and authorities need to strengthen tourism links, products, and tourism markets, have policies to attract potential investors and form tourism complexes, large-scale tourism service projects, shopping and entertainment centres.

In addition, localities also need to take advantage of the value of natural resources to create specific and differentiated tourism products, and develop tourism associated with environmental protection.

Poor transport infrastructure is one of the barriers to tourism development in Miệt Thứ. VNS Photo Văn Châu

What should local authorities do to attract investors?

To develop agricultural and rural tourism effectively and sustainably, the province needs to implement many policies to encourage and provide incentives for investment in tourism development with many dynamic and reasonable policies such as capital support, tax incentives and human resource training to attract resources from businesses and farming households.

The participation of tourism businesses will be a strong resource to promote the development of agricultural tourism. Private businesses are important in the process of linking, exploiting and creating products with services that have local characteristics, increasing attractiveness to tourists.

The province needs to develop and popularise typical agri-tourism models that are suitable to the advantages of localities, such as visiting farms, traditional craft villages, and experiencing rural life, culture and food.

In addition, local residents doing tourism need to renovate and improve their facilities, preserve the landscape and environment, have a friendly, civilised, hospitable attitude, and respect and support tourists during their local tours. VNS