Promoting Sin Ho Plateau Tourism

Located 64 kilometres to the west of Lai Chau town, 1,500 metres above sea level, Sin Ho Plateau is considered Lai Chau province’s roof with mild climate all year round and plenty of fruit. Along the way from Lai Chau town to Sin Ho are bushy forests, valleys, streams, spectacular caves, Van Long Mountain Pass and Le Loi stele which were listed as vestiges, rich cultures of 15 ethnic groups and regional markets.

 

With potential to promote tourism on Sin Ho Plateau, Lai Chau province has developed tourism in phases, especially concentrated on sustainable community tourism. At the moment, tourism activities in Sin Ho have been unguided without any specific products and target customers, actual investment and communication and market research to serve tourism activities. There are inadequate tourism facilities and transport is difficult.

 

 Mr Tran Van Long, Director of Lai Chau provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that the province has issued a policy of step-by-step tourism promotion on Sin Ho Plateau in the direction of sustainable development. Actually, it is important to work out measures to attract tourists, but the beforehand work is planning. First, the province needs to build up tourism models which are community tourism, resorts located in cultural hamlets and village sites, proceeding with other Northwest districts and provinces’ tours. There should be specific planned measures to preserve, exploit and promote folk cultural values of the local community.

 

In tourism promotion proposal from 2011 to 2015, the province will give priority to investment in: management and organization, human resource development, and facility enhancement. Projects building accommodation sites such as hotels, luxury restaurants, resorts, lodges will be implemented. The province set a target that by 2020, Sin Ho will have at least one international 5-star hotel. Besides, the proposal also focuses on promoting business services, restaurants, investing to develop restaurant networks and local specialties, while protecting the environment. According to Mr Long, annually, Sin Ho attracts over 30,000 national and international visitors. To attract a large number of tourists, in addition to the above measures, there featured products and communication plan must be created, thereby more people will come to Sin Ho Plateau.