Hanoi strives to attract more tourists: official
The Vietnam Business Forum
interviewed Director of municipal Department of Culture, Sports and
Tourism To Van Dong on this aspect.
* Does Hanoi have any special plans to accelerate the development of tourism sector in 2014?
To keep up the growth momentum of international tourist arrivals in
2013, right from the early days of 2014, the municipal government
assigned the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism to build tourist
attraction plans for Hanoi.
Specifically, the department will
implement the Hanoi tourism development plan until 2020, with a vision
to 2030, and create a healthy and secure environment for tourists. The
tourism sector still has certain limits but all international tourists
will feel satisfied during their time with Hanoi.
* It is said
that Hanoi will be more attractive to travellers if peddling and street
teasing are brought to an end. What do you think about this issue?
Firstly, our department will help the citizens and tourism businesses
understand and share efforts to build a healthy and comfortable tourism
environment.
The city will address some issues that affect the
tourism industry although they are not popular. For example, the
department is currently developing a tourist support centre system to
deal with all problems the tourists may confront and prevent the
phenomena that may cause bad image of Hanoi on tourists.
In the
long term, the tourism sector will follow the approved tourism
development planning. I believe that with effort and resolve immediate
and long-term issues Hanoi will be certainly a tourist attraction.
* After being expanded, Hanoi has the most traditional handicraft
villages in the country. What solutions has the department taken to make
traditional handicraft village sightseeing a typical tourism product in
the future?
After Hanoi expanded its administrative boundary, it
has many more villages, totally nearly 1,300 cottage industry villages.
These are worthy treasures and worthy to be preserved and promoted.
Therefore, the Hanoi People’s Council has recently approved seven
typical traditional handicraft villages which will be preserved and
promoted by the department and exemplified for others to follow.
Preserved traditional handicraft villages will be very attractive
tourism products in the future. After traditional handicraft villages
promote their strengths, this will definitely be a strong point of Hanoi
tourism.-VNA