Visitors take photos at the booth introducing Ninh Bình tourism potential at the 8th VITM 2020 in Hà Nội last November. VNS Photo Lê Hương
HÀ NỘI — Experts will discuss promoting domestic tourism at a forum to be held on April 14 and 15 in the northern province of Ninh Bình.
Titled ‘National Forum on Domestic Tourism’, the event, hosted by the Việt Nam Tourism Association (VITA), Ninh Bình Province’s Tourism Department and other agencies, is expected to gather some 500 participants including representatives from the culture ministry, tourism management agencies and leading tourism enterprises.
The forum is the opening activity in the framework of the Vietnam International Tourism Mart (VITM) Hà Nội 2021.
“Participants will analyse the importance of domestic tourism, the situation of developing domestic tourism in Việt Nam and the region as well as essential factors to develop domestic tourism,” said Vũ Thế Bình, Deputy Chairman of the VITA, at a press conference held in Hà Nội on Monday.
“The participants will propose solutions for developing domestic tourism together with international tourism, suggest solutions to boost domestic growth in general and Ninh Bình tourism in particular,” he said.
According to the director of Ninh Bình Tourism Department Bùi Văn Mạnh, the local tourism sector will focus on upgrading old tourism products to suit the “new normal” situation.
“Destinations will be the same but they will be changed a little bit to suit domestic customers’ taste,” he said. “For example, a route to visit Tràng An, Tam Cốc and Hang Múa will be added with a farmstay destination; or night tours to Bái Đính Pagoda with the combination of yoga practice.”
Leaders of the association said domestic tourism has transformed during the pandemic. Previously, few tourism enterprises properly considered the role of domestic customers.
Mạnh said the province expects to make Ninh Bình a leading tourism destination by 2030.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of visitors to Ninh Bình has dropped drastically.
In the first three months of this year, the province welcomed more than 600,000 visitors, 20 per cent of the figure in the same period in 2019.
The annual VITM will be held between May 5 and 8 in Hà Nội, the association announced at the press conference.
“The VITM Hà Nội 2021 is another effort and initiation to recover tourism activities. Tourism workers are happy with recovered activities and so are people from related sectors,” Bình said.
The market is expected to gather 350 booths of 450 tourism agencies from 40 localities nationwide to introduce their tourism products and promotions.
Representatives of the tourism sectors of Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (China) will also join the event.
In the previous eight editions, the VITM has gathered mostly travel agents, but now more resorts and hotels have signed up, Bình said.
He also added during the pandemic, meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) tourism has developed widely alongside golf tourism.
Workshops at the VITM 2021 are expected to seek solutions to various problems like the brain drain in tourism human resources.
Thousands of tourism enterprises have stopped their operation, 30 per cent of tourism workers have left their jobs and 80 per cent of tourism human resources have not been working daily as usual since the COVID-19 outbreak last year. VNS
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