Giving wings to tourism with Binh Thuan culinary culture

Possessing diverse and unique coastal dishes but still with its own distinctive and unmistakable features, Binh Thuan is promoting its culinary culture advantages in tourism development.

As a coastal province in the South Central Coast region, Binh Thuan has many unique and new tourist attractions, this location is a condition to become a tourist "paradise" for those who love the sea. This place has blue sea, white sand, golden sunshine and diverse and unique cuisine that few places can match.

Binh Thuan specialty of one-sun-dried squid. Illustrative photo.

Creating new tourism products to meet the diverse needs and tastes of the community and tourists is extremely necessary. Culinary tourism is a new direction chosen by localities in the province and businesses. From here, culinary culture has many opportunities to help tourism reach further, adding depth and many nuances imbued with the culture and people of Binh Thuan.

In recent years, Binh Thuan has been promoting its culinary culture advantages in tourism development. Increasing promotion and connection to promote culinary tourism, forming and maintaining destinations with “unique culinary” experiences in Binh Thuan is creating great attraction for domestic and international tourists when they set foot on this land.

For the tourism sector, cuisine is not simply the provision of regular food services but also a tourism product through which tourists can explore and learn about the culture of the place they visit. Therefore, building a systematic, creative, connected tourism product and focusing on innovation will help tourists have more interesting experiences. This is the way being implemented by districts, towns, cities, and some tourist destinations in Binh Thuan.

Dishes that "contain" a unique culinary standard of Binh Thuan such as: dried squid, sea shrimp, hotpot, fried fish, fish salad, banh can, banh xeo... (Phan Thiet); king crab, oil-fed fish, sea urchin (Tuy Phong); frogs, lizards in Le area (Bac Binh); moon crab, jumping snails, sea cucumber (Phu Quy); squid cake (Ham Thuan Nam); hill chicken (Ham Thuan Bac); snakehead fish (Tanh Linh) or go to Duc Linh to enjoy specialties along the La Nga river. Just like that, "delicious" cuisine has reached far, causing "nostalgia" with tourists and making Binh Thuan's culinary culture proud. And it is indispensable to have specialties as gifts, such as: fish sauce, fish cake, dried squid, various types of dried seafood; specialties: dragon fruit, gum tragacanth, grapes, milky green rice... bestowed upon Binh Thuan by nature.

Besides the existing strengths, the development of culinary tourism in Binh Thuan also has some shortcomings. That is, the development of culinary tourism is small-scale, the quality of food hygiene and safety in some places is not paid much attention. There are some opinions that most of them still stop at visiting destinations combined with exploring festivals and culinary exchange programs. There are no tourism products that truly highlight the value of local cuisine...

In 2023, Binh Thuan will host the National Tourism Year with the theme: "Binh Thuan - Green Convergence". This is an opportunity to promote local cuisine on domestic and foreign media, on social networks: Tiktok, Facebook, Youtube, Google, through articles by tourists and celebrities mentioning the culinary culture of Binh Thuan. If we know how to value and properly exploit the culinary culture of districts, towns and cities in the province, link tourism with cuisine, develop culinary tourism based on the available advantages of each locality, it will help promote strong growth of tourism, build the tourism brand of Binh Thuan.

To do this, authorities at all levels, functional agencies as well as organizations, businesses and even each Binh Thuan citizen need to correctly recognize the role of culinary culture. From there, functional agencies, tourism businesses... develop a methodical and synchronous plan. At the same time, create differences and uniqueness; exploit the advantages of each locality in investing and developing tourism, creating an important highlight to help promote Binh Thuan's culinary culture to domestic and international tourists. Exploiting this advantage in the right direction, Binh Thuan tourism will create a breakthrough in the coming time, at the same time contributing to affirming the brand of blue sea, white sand, and golden sunshine.

Each destination in Binh Thuan has its own unique specialties, created by its own traditional cultural and historical values, “trying” to “satisfy” the culinary preferences of each tourist. What every Binh Thuan resident can do and do well is to tell tourists the “story” behind each dish of their hometown so that tourists can fully understand the value of cuisine; so that every time they come to Binh Thuan, tourists can not only “enjoy” but also “save” it on their itinerary. Only by doing so can culinary culture become a driving force for the development of Binh Thuan tourism as the set goal.

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