During the past years, through its festival events, Thua Thien Hue has welcomed over 2 million visitors, twice as much as its local population. With this result, tourism service value has accounted for 45 percent of the gross product of Thua Thien Hue province.
With the theme "Cultural heritage with integration and development-meeting place of historic cities," Festival 2012 has highlighted the significance of cultural values, which have exerted a huge impact on economic development. This is a great opportunity to promote cultural values to the outside world. It also creates conditions to help Thua Thien Hue gain development, deserving to be a city always considered a unique cultural and tourist centre of Vietnam.
Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Mr Phan Tien Dung, Director of Thua Thien Hue Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and Permanent Member of the Organizing Committee of the National Tourism Year 2012. Thu Huyen reports.
This is the 7th time that Thua Thien Hue has organized its festival. What are the differences in the festival organization this year compared to previous years?
Festival Hue 2012 with many diverse activities and attractions will take place not only in Hue city but also in many districts and towns around the province. Simultaneously, at the festival this year, many scientific conferences will be held to review the cultural values and promote the efficiency of festivals in Vietnam.
2012 is the year of the Heritage Tourism of the North Central Provinces. These localities are the home to many world heritages and important national heritages. The links between localities from Thanh Hoa to Thua Thien - Hue is essential. Particularly, Thua Thien - Hue is also the exchanging venue linking the North Central and South Central region, especially big cities like Da Nang, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, with over 30 activities and events to promote its unique culture. Particularly in Hue, focus will be laid on introducing the national tourism year’s three main contents including: promotion of heritage tourism; focus on exploiting festivals, especially religious festivals such as temple worship Huyen Tran, Hoa festivals, and the Feast of Vesak; and providing visitors with practical experience.
Much is spent on festival organization. So what can we gain from the festival?
Festivals offer an in-depth cultural marketing strategy. Happily, a growing number of tourists have generated great income. Besides, we get the visitors’ admiration for the culture of Hue and Vietnam culture. This is the greatest achievement in terms of diplomacy. It is true, the organizing cost is high. The concern is to find the way to increase the proportion of socialization to reduce the state budget.
Currently, all festivals in Hue are socialized, such as exotic arts which have been invested VND billions by private enterprise. In Festival 2012, Thua Thien Hue also plans for 10-12 socialization activities. These are positive community activities and Hue people will be the masters of this Festival.
The approved long-term strategy of Vietnam's tourism is to increase festival visitor volume by 20 percent each year. This is the largest source of revenue to offset the huge costs of the festival organization.
What are the key factors that ensure the success of festival?
For a successful festival, we need 3 necessary factors including organization venue, natural cultural heritage and sophistication of human life. All three elements need to be promoted in full. Conservation of cultural heritage is an important orientation in the development strategy of Thua Thien Hue. Therefore, the province's investment focuses on the restoration of historical relics. If there is restoration of relics, the area for the festival will be expanded and the historical features will be respected and promoted. The locality has actively located the 15 largest factories outside the Hue Citadel area to preserve the integrity of the cultural heritage.
In recent years, Hue has laid special focus on restoring a number of works such as the Citadel, Royal Museum of Antiquities, Cung An Dinh Van Thanh, and Thien Mu Pagoda, which are to be completed by the end of this year. Phu Bai Airport, Chan May port has been upgraded. Chan May port has as many as 35 ships during the peak month. Each ship can carry 1500 to 2500 people. This shows that Hue has always been one of the greatest attractions. And tourist arrivals by sea are on the rise.
Currently, the province has about 11,000 rooms with 20,000 beds. Visitor volume increases by 15-20 percent each festival. During the last two years, the number of rooms has increased by 20 percent to serve about 200,000 visitors coming to Festival 2012.
The province has also set up monitoring teams who help strengthen management and control of prices of goods, services, and hotels in order to deliver the best services to visitors to Thua Thien Hue, especially during Festival Hue 2012.
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