Tra Vinh province records giant stride in tourism development

Tra Vinh (VNA) – More tourists have come to the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh, a wonderland of diverse destinations that deliver big on excellent architecture, history and beauty.

Along with stunning landscapes of mangrove forests and islets on Tien and Hau Rivers, Tra Vinh boasts many popular attractions like Ba Dong sea, Ba Om pond, a wide range of national intangible cultural heritages, ancient houses, lush orchard gardens, and 142 Khmer pagodas built with classical architecture.

Realizing that the province has not tapped its tourism potential to the fullest over the past years, local authorities have outlined an ambitious plan to develop tourism into a spearhead economic sector. It eyes to welcome 2.5 million travellers by 2025, including 85,000 foreigners, and gain more than 1.6 trillion VND (68.94 million USD) in tourism revenue from 2025.

According to Director of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Duong Hoang Sum, preferential policies have been penned to attract investment in tourism technical infrastructure and promotion campaigns enhanced both inside and outside the nation.

Overriding priority is to build Ba Om pond tourism complex into a national tourism site, he said, adding the province is calling for investments to mangrove eco-tourism area, Duyen Hai hot mineral spring, and Ba Dong beach eco-tourism site.

Furthermore, Cau Ke district, Tra Cu district and Duyen Hai town will be built into hubs for orchard tourism, sea tourism as well as festival and spiritual tourism.

Aware of huge potential of community-based tourism business, the province has given financial support to local households to develop homestay services. Accordingly, households offering between two and five rooms are aided with 30 million VND per room and have 50 percent of their lending interest subsidised under specific conditions.

Investment in restaurants with areas spanning 200 square metres and above to serve more than 100 guest at a time receives 500,000 VND per square metre in support, and the maximum fund is 200 million VND for each restaurant.

Meanwhile, the purchase of transport vehicles able to carry more than 20 passengers each will see 10 percent of costs financed, with maximum funding of 50 million VND.

As for tourism investment projects, investors will receive 150 million VND for each project to provide human resources training. In addition, as much as 14 billion VND will be splashed out for tourism promotion programmes until 2020.

 

Earlier this month, the province launched the Con Chim community-based tourism site in Chau Thanh district. A large dune on Co Chien river, Con Chim has its natural and farming areas spanning 60 and 34 hectares, respectively. Since May this year, 20 tours to Con Chim have been sold on a trial basis, and they have received praise for service quality from travel agencies and tourists.

Last year, the province welcomed over 640,000 tourists; however, only half of them stayed overnight, with length of stay averaged at 1.5 days per person.

Thanks to local efforts, Tra Vinh attracted more than 765,400 visitors during January-September, up 66.46 percent from the same time last year. Tourism revenue was estimated at 279.8 billion VND, or 107.24 billion VND higher than the amount gained in the nine-month period last year.

Sum said that Tra Vinh is striving to welcome around 1.4 million arrivals, and earn 372 billion VND from tourism services. The province will promote tourism linkage with other localities in the Mekong Delta region and Ho Chi Minh City so as to turn tourism into an important economic sector of the locality./.