Ho Chi Minh city will implement many typical travel products to focus on exploiting and promoting the strengths of tourism of Thu Duc city and districts associated with the type of local strengths.

Foreign visitors in Ho Chi Minh city (Photo: Thanh Vu/TTXVN)

On July 13, Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism held a progress conference on tourism development of the city in the first 6 months of 2023.

According to the Department’s report, the number of foreign visitors to the city in the first six months was 1.941.267, which was up 306% over the same period in 2022 and reaching 38.8% compared to the 2023 plan.

Domestic tourists to the city in the first 6 months reached 16,415,438 visits. This was up 48% over the same period in 2022 and reaching 46.9% compared to the plan in 2023.

Based on the achieved results, in the last months of the year, the tourism industry will advise the People’s Committee to implement the Strategy for Tourism Development of Ho Chi Minh City until 2030. The Department of Tourism continues to implement the Smart Tourism Development Project in Ho Chi Minh City in the period of 2021-2025, accelerate the implementation of the tourism database system and the Tourism service information integration project…

Regarding the tourism product development, Director of the Department of Tourism Nguyen Thi Anh Hoa said that the tourism industry would deploy specific tourism products to focus on exploiting and promoting the tourism strengths of Thu Duc city and districts associated with tourism types that are potential strengths of the locality.

To complete the water tourism development plan, the Department of Tourism cooperates with the Department of Transport to advise on solutions to support transport and waterway tourism businesses, and promote solutions to develop cruise tourism in Ho Chi Minh City in 2023.

Concurrently, the Department also cooperates with other sectors to develop products of cultural and historical tourism, agricultural and ecological tourism associated with the implementation of the new-style rural area building program, night travel.

In particular, the Department of Tourism and relevant departments and branches jointly complete the MICE Tourism Development Policy (the type of tourism combining conferences, seminars, exhibitions, event organization, and company travel rewards for employees, partners). The tourism industry increases the attraction of destinations to absorb high-spending tourists, and concurrently pay attention to honor and encourage the tourism business community to bring MICE tourists to the city.

In the coming time, the city’s tourism industry is expected to announce the voting results of the program “Ho Chi Minh City – 100 interesting things”, which is also one of the tourism stimulation solutions.

On the same day, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism in collaboration with the Industrial Product Design and Prototyping Association, the Ho Chi Minh city Handicrafts and Woodworking Association (HAWA) organized the announcement and awarding of the contest “Ho Chi Minh city Tourism Souvenir Design.”

Representatives of the awarded authors and works in the contest “Ho Chi Minh city Tourism Souvenir Design.” (Photo: My Phuong/TTXVN)

The First prize worth 80 million VND (including cash and gifts) of the Tourism Souvenir Group belongs to the “Bamboo coffee maker” by Nguyen Huynh Nam; and the First prize of the Conference gift group belongs to the “Gold-plated architectural 3D card” of Tayta Smart Arts Co., Ltd.

The contest organizing committee also awarded the Second Prize, Third Prize and Consolation Prize to other works and authors.

Products with high prizes will be selected as gifts from the city leaders for domestic and foreign delegations to the city, participating in promotional activities, trade promotion, tourism…

The Department of Tourism gives priority to promoting and introducing attractive products winning high awards to accommodation establishments, tour operators… to sell to tourists in the near future.

Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism Bui Thi Ngoc Hieu said that the contest “Ho Chi Minh city Tourism Souvenir Design” was launched from May 2022. The organizing committee received more than 120 entries with many different product categories such as lacquer, crafts, traditional and environment-friendly materials…

High-quality works following the contest’s rules on the city’s characteristics were designed by candidates who are students of university having design faculty, amateur and professional designers, and souvenir production and selling businesses.