In 2024, Quang Ninh has reached the record target of 19 million visitors with the efforts of many tourism businesses and localities. This year, the province's tourism strives to welcome 20 million visitors, a not-so-high number that shows the prediction of market stability after the recovery period due to the pandemic and natural disasters...
According to the tourism industry, the number of visitors to Quang Ninh last year had good growth, both in terms of domestic visitors participating in spring festivals, summer tourists, international visitors in autumn and winter as well as visitors during holidays throughout the year. This uniformity and stability has helped destinations and localities attract a certain increase in visitors.
In particular, the number of international tourists has shown a strong recovery since the beginning of the year. By the end of last year, the province had welcomed 3.8 million foreign visitors. The 10 major international tourist markets to Quang Ninh remained stable, including: China, South Korea, Taiwan, the US, India, France, Australia, the UK, Germany, and Japan. In particular, the Indian market has shown many improvements with visiting groups of billionaires and companies from India.
Districts, towns, cities and a number of departments and branches in the province have also actively researched and organized hundreds of cultural, artistic, sports and commercial activities and events to attract tourists to the localities throughout the year. At the same time, they have built and developed new tourism products associated with the advantages of local tourism resources, contributing to the recovery and strong development of Quang Ninh tourism...
Cultural heritage attracts visitors - low spending power
Although it has exceeded the target in many indicators, from total number of visitors, international visitors, number of guests staying and number of days staying, spending level of visitors... but reality also shows that there are still shortcomings and limitations that Quang Ninh tourism needs to overcome to go further in the next goals, ensuring more sustainability.
According to the assessment, in the first months of the year, Quang Ninh tourism attracted a large number of visitors to the relics and traditional festivals in the area, with a total of 8.5 million visitors for the year, mainly concentrated in the spring. However, the average spending per visitor is still limited because visitors mainly come for the day.
Current reality shows that in the whole province, only Yen Tu relic and scenic area has large-scale investment enterprises with a system of accommodation facilities from high-end to medium-end and developing a variety of products and services to attract visitors throughout the four seasons and overnight stays...
Sharing with us at the workshop on heritage economic development held in Van Don at the end of last year, Dr. Nguyen Van Anh, Deputy Director in charge of the Center for Research and Promotion of Cultural Resources, Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities, analyzed: Investing in heritage is a very difficult issue because it requires long-term perseverance and its ability to make profits cannot be as fast as other fields, so attracting businesses is relatively difficult. To attract businesses to invest in heritage economic development, the government, along with protecting and investing in research and clarifying the value of heritage, also needs to have appropriate policies for businesses, and cannot simply apply them like other business fields...
Impact of natural disasters and epidemics
In 2024, Quang Ninh tourism was on the rise, but in early September, Typhoon Yagi swept through, causing most hotels, service providers, cruise ships, ports, and infrastructure serving tourists in the localities to be affected to varying degrees, with some businesses suffering losses of hundreds of billions of VND. Although businesses have made great efforts to overcome the consequences, reinvest, and reopen to welcome guests soon, the weakening of the financial capacity of businesses is inevitable, affecting long-term investment in the development of Quang Ninh tourism.
Meanwhile, in the past time, many key tourism projects in the province have been invested in and built, but some projects have not been completed and put into operation, so they have not created a breakthrough in tourism development. Quang Ninh has a system of islands with attractive tourism resources but has not attracted many worthy investors to form high-quality, international-class resorts. Accommodation services in some localities in the province are of poor quality, and the facilities and equipment of many accommodation establishments are degraded but have not been upgraded after the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are still difficulties
Another problem that has existed for a long time and has not been significantly resolved by Quang Ninh tourism in recent times is that tourism products in the area mainly focus on exploiting the advantages of available resources; cultural, entertainment and shopping products are still lacking and less attractive, and have not created many different products with high quality commensurate with the value of the province's resources. Many tourist areas and spots still lack a system of additional services to meet the diverse needs of tourists.
Winter tourism products, walking streets, and nighttime entertainment activities have not really developed. Last year, the province announced new tourist routes on Bai Tu Long Bay and a tourist route connecting Ha Long Bay and Bai Tu Long, but in reality, exploitation is still slow, partly due to the lack of tourism products and infrastructure serving tourism in this bay, such as overnight stops for ships, ports in island communes, etc.
In addition, global factors are also forecast to affect Quang Ninh tourism this year. These include political influences, military conflicts, and the global economic downturn affecting tourists' spending power, itineraries, and travel needs. Competition from regional destinations such as Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, etc. for Vietnam tourism in general and Quang Ninh in particular is increasingly fierce. The international tourist market has recently recovered but has not yet met expectations, especially from traditional markets such as Europe and China.
Regarding the Chinese tourism market, although it still leads and surpasses the number of visitors in the top 10 international tourist markets to Quang Ninh last year, the number of nearly 1.94 million visitors (accounting for more than 10% of the province's total visitors) still shows a slow recovery. This is assessed to be due to the decline in China's economy and its domestic tourism control policy, so the improvement from this traditional, key tourist market of Quang Ninh this year is still unlikely to have a strong breakthrough.
All of these factors have more or less affected Quang Ninh’s goal of attracting 20 million tourists this year, including 4.5 million international visitors, and striving for a revenue of VND50,000 billion. Overcoming both immediate and long-term difficulties and challenges requires great efforts from the province as well as each locality and enterprise so that Quang Ninh tourism can continue to grow.
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