Tourism cooperation bears fruits

Since Hanoi and Can Tho signed a tourism development cooperation agreement in September 2008, Hanoi businesses have worked with their southern counterparts to introduce tours while actively assisting Can Tho in advertising its tourist attractions.

Tourism cooperation bears fruits in Mekong Delta

Four years after the agreement took effect, tourism in Can Tho has made great progress and the number of domestic and foreign visitors to the city has considerably increased. In the first five months of 2012, Can Tho welcomed 452,000 visitors, up 20 percent from the same time in 2011. Of this, foreign visitors totaled 84,000, 44 percent of the year\'s target. Can Tho currently has more than 180 tourist accommodation facilities with a total of 4,590 rooms, including 56 one to four-star hotels.
Notable tourist attractions in the city, including the Ninh Kieu landing station, the Cai Rang Floating Market and the My Khanh tourist site, have attracted an increasing number of visitors.

Can Tho City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Deputy Director Huynh Van Nhat attributed the above-mentioned achievement to close cooperation in tourism management and promotion between Hanoi and Can Tho. He said he believed that the cooperation will further bear fruits.
Many experts assessed that although tourism cooperation between Hanoi and Can Tho is just in its early stage it obtained encouraging results and was contributing to minimizing Can Tho tourism\'s weaknesses including the lack of attractive tourist offerings and souvenirs featuring Can Tho cultures. Apart from this, Can Tho needs to build more modern entertainment centers, while regional connectivity in tour development was still ineffective and tour prices in the Mekong Delta remained rather high.

Hanoi and Can Tho are expected to increase cooperation in order to construct unique, sustainable tourist offerings, attract investment for tourism projects, exchange information, implement tourism promotion programs inside and outside Vietnam, and work together in workforce training, based on which to create more tourism development opportunities for both localities.
Hanoi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism officials said that after making success in tourism cooperation with Can Tho, Hanoi would construct tourism cooperation with other provinces in the Mekong Delta. With its Phu Quoc Island, Kien Giang Province will be a priority in this cooperation program, they said.

In late May in Kien Giang, Hanoi and Kien Giang departments of culture, sports and tourism worked together to kick off a program promoting tours to Hanoi and Kien Giang. The two parties agreed upon strengthening cooperation in tourist offering and related information development and tourism promotion, assisting businesses from the two localities to exchange visitors, advertising tourist offerings and potentials through websites and the media, and holding tourism events of both localities to attract visitors. Experts and the two localities believe that the cooperation will provide many new tourism development opportunities.

• Source: VEN
• www.vietnamphoenixtour.com
• Tourism cooperation bears fruits