Ho Chi Minh City introduces 5 new river cruise routes

5 new river tours were introduced by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism within the framework of the 1st HCM City River Festival from August 4 to August 6, including the Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe inner-city tourist route, the Binh Dinh route, and the Binh Dinh route. Quoi, Cu Chi and Can Gio tourist routes (starting from Bach Dang Wharf), connecting routes to the Southeast and Western provinces or to Cambodia.

The waterway tourism products of Ho Chi Minh City provide experiences of landscape, architecture, culture, history and typical ecosystems in the basins of some major rivers, namely Dong Nai, Tien, and Hau rivers. and Phu Quoc, the largest coastal island in Vietnam.

These tour programs are being exploited by a number of travel businesses in the city such as Vietravel, Vietluxtour, TST Tourist, and Penguin Travel JSC.

Ms. Huynh Phan Phuong Hoang, Deputy General Director of Vietravel, assessed 5 new river tourism products that are spread evenly on the main routes of the city, from the inner city center to suburban spots and the whole East – Southwest region. . These will be potential products, creating more opportunities to experience and learn about Ho Chi Minh City for domestic and foreign tourists, as a basis for connecting inter-regional routes in the future.

“The limitation of river tourism products is that it is not attractive enough for tourists because of the lack of diversity in products and services. The current river cruise route is still lacking in the number of stops and limited in terms of tourism. both quality and attractiveness,” said Ms. Hoang.

Ms. Tran Thi Bao Thu, director of Vietluxtour’s marketing and communication department, said that Ho Chi Minh City has quite good tourist geographical factors in terms of topography, flow volume and landscape to develop river tourism. If this type of product is diversified, it will attract not only international tourists but also domestic and local tourists.

However, river tourism products are currently mainly river excursions and culinary programs, lacking festive colors as well as outstanding features of Southern river culture in general and Ho Chi Minh City in particular. 

These products are mainly short-range products, with quite diverse prices that can be better suited to the needs of domestic customers.

Explaining this, Ms. Thu said that domestic tourists often prefer festive programs and short sightseeing programs to relax on weekends or after work. Most importantly, after the event, these tours are still maintained regularly and are regularly promoted and renewed to always remind and stimulate demand with domestic tourists.

With the advantage of owning a 23 km long coastline with a dense network of rivers and canals with a density of up to 3.38 km/km2 and 80 km of the Saigon River flowing through, tourism and transportation industry The city can coordinate to organize many inner-city cruise lines, short-range and mid-range routes by river bus, high-speed train.