1,600 metres above the sea level, seductive landscape, fine climate, the attractive heights of Fansipan, Ham Rong Park, and Muong Hoa Valley, make the North-West region a famous tourist attraction for both local and foreign tourists. Furthermore, tourists are attracted by Bac (Silver) Falls, Love Falls, hamlets of Ban Ho, Cat Cat, Xin Chai, Ta Van, O Qui Ho Mountain Pass, ancient church, love market together with festivals of ethnic minorities such as Roong poc of the Giay people, Sai san of the H’Mong, Tet nhay of the Dao people.
With the number of tourists increasing 22 per cent a year, Lao Cai has developed an ambitious plan and the Prime Minister has approved it as part of the general development plan in 2015-2020 and vision of 2030 to make Lao Cai a first-rate tourist destination in the North-West region. It includes Sa Pa national tourist zone, Lao Cai city and a network of high quality and diverse tourism infrastructure, ethnic beauty and environmentally friendly.
Lao Cai tourism is being planned as an economic breakthrough in 2030. In 2015, Lao Cai hosted 2.1 million tourists. In 2016, the number is expected to be 2.5 million with turnover of VND6,300 billion and creating 10,000 jobs. In 2020, Lao Cai will receive 4.5 million local and foreign tourists with turnover of VND18,000 billion. In 2030 the figures will be 13 million tourists, VND58,500 billion in turnover and over 100,000 jobs.
Tremendous efforts
To attain those objectives, Lao Cai has completed the development plans of Sa Pa and Bac Ha urban areas, started building Sa Pa National Tourist Centre and Lao Cai National Tourist City, as well as tourist districts of Bac Ha and Bat Xat. By June 2016, Lao Cai had 18 tours and destinations, 8 local community tours officially recognised and 11 others under testing.
Regarding infrastructure, Noi Bai – Lao Cai highway has been operated since September 2014. Lao Cai has 5 national roads, 10 provincial roads, and 3 railways trains with 20 tourist coaches, 7 high-class bus companies from Hanoi, 3 inter-provincial bus lines with 947 buses, 4 local bus lines with 26 buses.
By July 2016, Lao Cai increased from 200 in 2011 to 662 accommodation facilities with 8,680 rooms, including 136 hotels of over 3,000 rooms and 250 homestay services. The province has 500 restaurants and several recreation centres such as sky cab lines Fansipan, Ham Rong, Cat Cat (Sapa), Ho Na (Bac Ha). So far, Lao Cai has attracted over 20 investment projects for tourism, including such important investors like Sun Group, Vingroup, Muong Thanh, VietnamPetro together with Gentling (Malaysia). The total investment capital amounted to over VND20,000 billion.
Other facilities are being developed such as Sa Pa and Bac Ha resorts, eco-tourism, hiking, community tourism combined with handicraft arts, night market and ethnic culture. Various tourist attractions have been highlighted in international press such as Sa Pa hiking, Bac Ha market, Sa Pa terrace fields and caravan tours.
High quality manpower needed
To attain such ambitious goals, Lao Cai tourism badly needs high quality, well trained and experienced manpower. Presently only 5.07 per cent of manpower is above university standard, with 21.23 per cent of tourism workers at university and high school levels. To upgrade service standards, Lao Cai tourism has trained 1,000 tourist guides and 2,000 workers for community tourism. Presently, Lao Cai has 8,226 people working in tourism (3,126 directly and 5,100 indirectly involved). There are 211 tourist guides and 335 assistants.
The province has 40 national and international travel agencies and 211 tour guides with only 3 international tourist guides. According to Mr Le Anh Dai, Director of Binh Minh International Travel Company (Pho Moi, Lao Cai), with high income, job opportunities, Lao Cai will be most attractive to manpower in tourism.
However, many young tourist guides started their career in Lao Cai have moved to other provinces for new experience. Local tourist guides have the advantage of their knowledge on ethnic culture but are weak in foreign languages and expertise. Among 4,000 people working in restaurants and bars, 80 per cent are on-job training without high expertise.
To fill the gap, Lao Cai tourism increases promotion activities, cooperating with tourism services from Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Quang Nam, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Quang Ninh, 8 provinces in North-West region as well as Yunan (China), ALPC (France), Vancouver (Canada), EU, KOICA (Korea), and JICA (Japan).
Lao Cai is a late comer, but learning experiences from others, it is fully confident in the ambitious plan.
Nguyen Thanh
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Vietnamese
