Craft Village Tourism Needs A Multifaceted Cooperation

Tourism is an economic sector whose development is always based on the exploitation of resource values, both natural tourism resource and human culture tourism resource. The traditional craft village is regarded a type of special human culture tourism because the products of the craft village tourism consist of both material and immaterial value contents.

 

The development of craft village tourism is built on the exploitation of traditionally cultural values and skill manifestations in products manufactured by craft villages. The craft village tourism is now being developed and has attracted the interest of travellers, especially international visitors, because the products of the craft village tourism are varied from region to region and from country to country. Notably, such products always contain traditional cultural values that represent territories where visitors drop in.

“To become a cultural activity, the craft village tourism will attract tourists and contributed to the development of tourism industry. Further, the development of craft village tourism will have active contributions to the advertisement and expansion of craft villages and this helps preserve traditionally cultural values and attract the curiosity of the world,” Dr Pham Trung Luong, Director of Tourism Development Research Centre under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

 

Mr. Luu Duy Dan, Secretary General of Vietnam Association for Handicraft Villages, said: “The development of craft village tourism also creates more jobs and improves the living standards of local residents by their participation into the tourism activity. This is very meaningful when a large proportion of villagers rely on tourism. More importantly, villagers in rural areas in general and handicraft villages in particular are very poor and they are trying to seek markets for their products in the market economic mechanism.”

Although the craft village tourism sector has returned initially encouraging results, the notion of craft village tourism still seems new to villagers and the result from this type of tourism has not fully reflected the real potential. Particularly, several projects such as “Feasible study on the development of tourism in combination handicraft production along the West-East Corridor,” “Hunger eradication and poverty reduction through community tourism,” have been carried out but the results are not actually good.

 

According to Mr. Dan, Kim Bong Village is a clear example. Visitors to Hoi An ancient city can drop on in Kim Bong Village easily but the benefits from tourism activity to Kim Bong Village’s community are limited. The living standards of the villagers are quite low. Further, the production of craft village tourism articles remains spontaneous, unscientific and lack of government supports. Therefore, products of handicraft villages are unattractive and uncompetitive. Van Phuc Silk Village (Ha Tay Province) is another example. Although it has a long-standing silk production industry, it is not making attractive tourism products as it is focusing on commercial silk.

 

According to Mr. Luong of the of Tourism Development Research Centre under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, to effectively develop craft village tourism model in Vietnam, it is necessary to have a multifaceted coordination and cooperation with important partners, such as tourism companies, especially privately run, local communities, state management authorities and policymakers and non-government organisations.

 

In addition, the building of the tourism development strategy must have the participation of related bodies like the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry and the People’s Committees of related localities in order to effectively combine strategic development orientations of individual sectors and ensure the feasibility of the strategy in the real life.

 

Mr. Dan affirmed several lessons have drawn from the development of Kim Bong Village’s tourism: the key role of the local community and government; the skill improvement (communication, language, production and business management) for the community to develop tourism activities; the infrastructure development for tourism; and the combination of public and private benefits in tourism development of craft villages.