From now until April 2012 Star Cruises Company from Malaysia will make 25 trips to Chan May Port, carrying about 300,000 tourist arrivals to the UNESCO World Heritage town of Hue in central Vietnam by sea.
The tourists will visit the Royal Palace, Thien Mu Pagoda, go shopping at Dong Ba Market and Big C Supermarket, and enjoy Hue gastronomy in restaurants.
Deputy Chairman of the Thua Thien Hue provincial People’s Committee, Ngo Hoa, said that this is the first time a tourist group will enter Chan May Port by passport, thus, close collaboration between relevant agencies is needed to create favorable conditions for the tourists.
Star Cruises also co-ordinated with Saigontourist during the 1999-2008 period, taking hundreds of thousands of maritime tourists to visit Ha Long Bay and Danang.
After a short suspension due to the global economic crisis, Star Cruises have come back to Vietnam with contracts bringing tourists from Hainan Island, China to visit Hue.
In the first nine months of 2011, the Thua Thien Hua Province greeted more than 1.2 million tourist arrivals, including 487,000 foreign arrivals, up 6.89 percent. Specifically, the figure comprised more than 19,300 foreign arrivals visiting Hue by cruise ships, a 13.6 percent increase from the previous year.
Foreign tourists to Hue over the period were mainly from Thailand, France, the US and Germany. Tourism turnover of the province reached more than VND 762 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20.5 percent.