Elevating Tourism as Key Economic Sector

Bac Kan province has great tourism potential with its diverse landscapes, historical sites, unique ethnic cultures, and distinctive cuisine. By 2030, the province aims to develop tourism into a key economic sector, focusing on sustainable, professional, and high-quality growth.

 A scenic view of Ba Be Lake

Great potential

The Northeast mountainous province of Bac Kan has diverse and rich tourism resources with great potential for development, like mountain and river landscapes, caves, waterfalls and OCOP agricultural products.

The most prominent is the special national monument, Ba Be Lake. With high biodiversity, beautiful and attractive natural landscapes, Ba Be Tourist Area is the core for developing many types of tourism such as ecotourism, sightseeing and research tourism, leisure tourism, community tourism, adventure sporting tourism and weekend entertainment.

Beside the natural beauty, Bac Kan also has rich cultural tourism resources with 120 historical, cultural and scenic sites, including two special national relics (Cho Don Safe zone and Ba Be Lake Scenic Area), seven national relics, 62 provincial relics and 49 inventoried relics. Furthermore, the province is home to traditional cultural festivals, customs, folk knowledge, intangible cultural heritages imbued with the cultural identity of Tay, Nung, Mong, Dao and other ethnic groups. Typically, the representative intangible cultural heritage of humanity (Practices of Then by Tay, Nung and Thai ethnic groups) and 20 national intangible cultural heritages such as Bat dance of the Tay people, Khen dance of the Mong people, Pa Dung singing of the Dao people and Sli singing of the Nung people. Indeed, these are great resources for tourism development.

Hua Ma Cave in Ba Be Lake is a popular tourist attraction

Making tourism a spearhead economic sector

Resolution 18-NQ/TU dated August 12, 2021 of the 4th meeting of the Provincial Party Committee (12th term) on Bac Kan tourism development in 2021 - 2025, with a vision to 2030, states the goal of developing tourism into a spearhead economic sector by 2030. To realize this goal, Bac Kan province has adopted many solutions to boost local tourism development. The top priority is to strengthen the leadership and direction of the Party, enhance the administration of the government, and reinforce the synchronous coordination of political and social organizations at all levels in tourism development.

The province has also focused on restructuring to ensure professional and sustainable tourism. At the same time, Bac Kan has introduced support policies to create an enabling environment for tourism development. It has also reformed and raised the quality of tourism promotion, advertising and cooperation; and enhanced the quality of human resources to meet tourism development requirements.

Among tourism development solutions, Bac Kan pays special attention to planning and mobilizing investment resources for tourism infrastructure development. It will give priority to allocating resources for construction of planned tourist areas in line with the Bac Kan Provincial Planning for the 2021 - 2030 period, with a vision to 2050, as a basis for attracting investors for infrastructure construction and tourism development.

To date, the province has completed the plan for the preservation, restoration and rehabilitation of the Cho Don Safe Zone National Special Monument, approved by the Prime Minister in Decision 1496/QD-TTg dated November 30, 2023 and the plan for the conservation and promotion of the value of Ba Be Lake scenic landscape (awaiting the Prime Minister's decision). These will be the basis for the province to call on businesses and investors to carry out high-quality tourism projects.

From central and local budgets, Bac Kan has launched transport infrastructure development investment projects to support local tourism development. The construction and completion of key transport works will contribute significantly to bolstering socioeconomic development and connecting tourist routes with provinces in the region.

The province has also concentrated resources on investing in tourism infrastructure development to meet new development requirements as visitor arrivals increase. Currently, the province has 237 accommodation facilities with a total of 2,304 rooms, including 31 hotels (1-3-star class), 35 motels, and 171 homestays. Ba Be district alone has 86 tourist accommodation facilities and 166 tourist boats operating in Ba Be Lake.

Currently, Bac Kan province has four travel service companies (three domestic companies and one international company), 22 certified tour guides, and more than 1,200 tourism workers working for accommodation facilities and food service companies, mainly small and medium in size.

Tourism promotion is always an important step in tourism development. Bac Kan has actively and consistently launched various solutions and actions to introduce tourism potential through such programs as Ba Be Tourism - Cultural Heritage Week Program, Conference on Bac Kan tourist destination promotion in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and Program on activities of the Tourism Development Linkage Group between Ho Chi Minh City and eight northeastern provinces.

The province has also taken part in promoting tourism at domestic events, fairs and exhibitions; organized Bac Kan Famtrip programs to attract travel agencies, tourism associations, cultural and tourism promotion centers and domestic press agencies to survey, build new attractive tours and routes, improve quality, and boost communications on local tourism products on the media, especially those with large audiences.

To attract tourists, the province has also focused on developing typical tourism products, creating distinctive differences and forming local brands by tapping existing potential like eco-tourism, leisure tourism, community tourism and historical - cultural tourism.

By Ngoc Tung, Vietnam Business Forum