The central province of Thua Thien-Hue welcomed more than 1.1 million visitors in the first three months of this year, up 39.5 percent from the same period last year, including 534,600 foreigners, a surge of 70.3 percent.
Visitors at Hue relic site
This is the first time the number of tourists to the province has exceeded 1 million in a quarter.
The first month of the year saw various festivals as well as traditional New Year (Tet), pushing up the number of visitors to the destination. Over the Tet holiday alone, the Hue Monument Conservation Centre served 117,000 tourists, including 47,000 foreigners.
This year, the province will implementing the “one destination-five heritage” tour to attract tourists. The Hue Festival this year will take place from April 27 to May 2 with various activities, including a street festival from April 28 to May 1, and an art performance featuring the music of late composer Trinh Cong Son. So far, 12 domestic and 22 foreign art troupes have registered to join the event.
In 2018, the Thua Thien-Hue tourism sector aims to serve up to 4.2 million visitors, up about 12 percent year on year, with revenue of about 4.2 trillion VND, up 15-16 percent over the previous year.
Hue, which was the imperial capital of Viet Nam for hundreds of years, is home to five heritages recognised by UNESCO, which are the Hue ancient citadel relic complex - a World Cultural Heritage site; Nha Nhac (Hue royal court music) - an intangible cultural heritage item; Nguyen Dynasty’s wood blocks - a documentary heritage item; Nguyen Dynasty’s Chau ban (royal administrative documents) - part of the Asia-Pacific Register of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme; and literature on Hue royal architecture - a documentary heritage.
The Hue imperial citadel relic was ranked second among top seven tourism attractions of Viet Nam in 2017.