Hai Phong Strives to Welcome 9.1 Million Tourists by 2024

With maritime tourism advantages, Cat Ba Archipelago, international airports, natural heritages, historical relics, hotel systems, resorts, restaurants and golf courses, Hai Phong City has increasingly affirmed its status as an attractive destination for domestic and foreign tourists. Recently, taking advantage of the boom of the “Hai Phong Food Tour” phenomenon, the city has actively deployed many new products, increased the value of the experiences for tourists while adopting green tourism transformation.

The Cat Ba Archipelago is recognized as a World Natural Heritage site by UNESCO

Active tourism promotion

In 2023, in addition to good administration and direction, the Hai Phong tourism sector paid much attention to fostering investment planning, advertising and cooperation for tourism development. A number of tourism projects were submitted to the Hai Phong People's Committee for approval, including the “master project for Hai Phong tourism development to 2025 and further to 2030” and “Rural tourism development associated with new rural development in Hai Phong to 2025, with a vision to 2030. At the same time, the city actively carried out tourism promotion and product introduction and boosted cooperation with other provinces and cities in Vietnam and foreign countries.

Specifically, the sector launched the “Free walking tour” - aimed to explore attractive destinations in the city to maintain the food tour product; connected with South Korean travel businesses to explore golf tourism combined with sightseeing; tourism promotion program at Hai Phong Railway Station; tourism promotion at the Tourism, Culture and Tourism Week; and the program to initiate the “Two countries - Six destinations” golden tourist route between China and Vietnam; and “Meet Korea” Conference.

In addition, the Tourism Department also actively informed and promoted tourism at major festivals, on media with high viewership rates, and reformed tourism advertising and promotion based on tourist information search trends. The department also boosted communications on destinations and cuisines on websites, dulichhaiphong.gov.vn and sodulich.haiphong.gov.vn, and social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

In 2023, the city's tourism sector welcomed and served 7.9 million visitors, an increase of 12.85% over 2022, higher than the target of 8.22%. Of the sum, international visitors accounted for 975,000, up 43%. The tourism revenue was VND7,110 billion, up 13%. In the first three months of 2024, the tourism sector welcomed 1.6 million visitors, up 10.92%, including 239,267 international visitors, up 1.46%. The tourism revenue was VND1,921.4 billion.

Leveraging its potential and strengths, along with the active involvement of local agencies and adaptable tourism businesses, Hai Phong’s tourism sector is poised to become a key economic pillar and a leading tourist hub in the country

Breakthrough goals in 2024

As Ha Long Bay - Cat Ba Archipelago was recently recognized by UNESCO as a World Natural Heritage, in 2024, the Hai Phong tourism sector expected to attract 9.1 million tourists.

Specifically, the tourism sector has focused on tapping domestic tourist markets with close distance and reasonable costs; approached international tourist markets; built and developed new tourism products and applied digital transformation in tourism advertising and promotion to meet tourists’ needs, tastes and trends in the new context.

Currently, the Tourism Department is preparing for the "Hai Phong Saturday Roaming" Program and actively working with the Hai Phong Tourism Association and People's Committees of districts to review and nominate local restaurants and eateries with acclaimed delicious dishes to participate in the journey to find and promote famous Vietnamese restaurants and eateries in 2024.

In addition, the department will continue to accelerate digital transformation in tourism advertising and promotion with two tasks “Digitizing images and descriptions at some tourist attractions in the city” and “Upgrading advertising tourism promotion websites into smart tourism information portals”. At the same time, the department will coordinate to implement Project 22 “Developing tourism associated with developing regional specialties to support people in applying population data and electronic identification and authentication in household economic development and digital economic development (under Project 06/CP) and provide a list of Hai Phong tourist destinations to integrate into the 3D/360 Map application of Ho Chi Minh City.

With the potential, strengths and fierce engagement of local agencies and departments as well as flexible activities of tourism businesses, the tourism sector will soon become a key economic sector and gradually make Hai Phong a major tourist center of the country.

By Tran Ngoc, Vietnam Business Forum