The northern mountainous province of Hoa Binh welcomed 650,000 visitors in the first quarter of the year including 48,000 foreign arrivals, up 37.4% from last year’s same quarter, said provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Director Bui Ngoc Lam.
He added that revenues from the tourism sector reached nearly US$200 billion in the quarter, up 25.5% from the comparable period last year.
Since the beginning of 2013, more than 70 travel companies from Hanoi, Da Nang, and HCM City have been actively promoting tourism in the province and the European Tourism Association has also been instrumental in developing tourism.
Lam said that as part of a bid to promote Hoa Binh as an attractive tourism destination, in recent years, the locality has focused on launching tourism packages in different forms such as cultural tourism, eco-tourism, and resort.
It also has a plan to upgrade Hoa Binh reservoir area in hopes that it will become a major national tourism attraction.
This year’s tourism promotion will be focused on improving state management capacity, increasing the quality of human resources, intensifying investment in preserving and conserving cultural and historical relics and offering a trans-tour in the northwestern provinces to create stable income for local residents.