Currently, Kien Giang is one of the most-visited provinces in the Mekong Delta and a "bright spot" in the country's tourism map. To have professional and sustainable tourism and make it a key economic sector, Kien Giang province is researching and developing many plans and scenarios for tourism growth suitable to actual local, regional and national situations.
The Mediterranean-style island town - a renowned tourist destination on Phu Quoc Island
Well-branded
Mr. Bui Quoc Thai, Director of Kien Giang Tourism Department , said: "Kien Giang province is gradually restructuring the tourism industry to ensure professionalism, modernity and sustainable development; effectively carrying out the tourism development plan, integrating the tourism development plan into the provincial planning for the 2021 - 2030 period, with a vision to 2050. The province is carrying out infrastructure investment projects and calling for investment capital for tourism infrastructure; and applying enabling mechanisms and policies on tourism development investment support."
Furthermore, executing Resolution 08-NQ/TW on developing tourism into a key economic sector, the department has worked with relevant agencies, localities and units to advise the Kien Giang Provincial Party Committee to introduce Resolution 03-NQ/TU. To date, the province has effectively implemented it with many action programs and plans with drastic solutions.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, in response to the Government's socioeconomic recovery and development program, the tourism sector has made a strong "turnaround" to be one of the first localities in the country to welcome international visitors again. In the first 10 months of 2023, Kien Giang's tourism industry still achieved high growth compared to the plan as well as the same period of 2022. In late October and early November 2023, tourist arrivals started to rebound strongly, especially international visitors. Phu Quoc City alone was estimated to welcome 5.7 million visitors, an increase of 11.7% year on year, including 555,000 international visitors, a 1.5-times growth. Total tourism revenue soared 65% year on year to over VND14,000 billion.
The synchronous and close connection of tourism authorities with associations, companies and tourists, and between tourism product and services providers and online travel tourism distributors and agencies, helped innovate tourism business activities and create attractive travel packages for each tourist segment with digital solutions to save time, optimize costs and enhance performance. Furthermore, the tourism sector also always focused on administrative reform and provided 100% of Level 4 online public services, hence supporting e-government construction.
Kien Giang tourism has developed rapidly, gradually positioning its brand on the tourism map of Vietnam and the world as a safe, attractive and hospitable destination. Every year, Kien Giang province operates and provides many new tourism products of high international quality along with many cultural festivals that have been upgraded in scale and organization to attract a lot of tourists. The sector also advised the Provincial People's Committee to approve the Kien Giang community tourism development project in the 2021 - 2025 period, with an eye to 2030 (currently developing a plan to concretize it into practice).
Towards smart tourism
Kien Giang has developed professional, quality and efficient smart tourism with tourists placed at the center. Emphasizing this issue further, Thai said: "Smart tourism development places reforming and building institutions and policies as a foundation and improving the quality of tourism human resources as a core factor. By 2025, the province will synchronously connect the smart tourism ecosystem with local smart cities; encourage the application of artificial intelligence, virtual travel assistants and other advanced technologies to serve tourists, communities, businesses and authorities.”
To develop sustainable smart tourism in the coming time, the sector will focus on eight basic solutions: Continue to improve mechanisms and policies, develop human resources and improve services for smart tourism development; thoroughly apply technology, digital transformation, standardize administrative processes and procedures, apply the ISO quality management system; form a digital information system about tourist areas, destinations, tourist service facilities and tourists, implement and perfect tourism databases and information systems; develop applications on mobile devices to provide tourists in key tourist areas, including information about destinations, tourism products and services and automatically translated travel information; and deploy and widely apply trends, digital methods, and new technology applications such as cloud computing, big data, mobile applications, artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots, IoT connectivity and virtual reality to develop digital economy in Kien Giang province.
“Kien Giang is likened to a miniature Vietnam with diverse terrain: islands, forests, mountains, plains, beautiful natural scenery and many untouched places. Tourists are increasingly looking for authenticity, locality and nature-exploring experiences. To increase the attraction of Kien Giang tourism in the eyes of tourists, the province will focus on building a project to develop Phu Quoc City into a national and international high-quality eco-tourism and island tourism service center. Kien Giang will research and invest in building new tourism products, specific and unique service products suitable to the local potential advantages of each tourist area in the province; focus on agricultural and rural tourism products associated with approved tourism development projects. Furthermore, there are policies to encourage strategic investors to develop high-quality tourism products and services suitable to local specific tourism resources,” he said.
By Cong Luan, Vietnam Business Forum
Vietnamese
