In recent times, Vietnam has been continuously honored by the World Travel Awards as "World's Leading Heritage Destination", "Asia's Leading Cultural Destination", "Asia's Leading Culinary Destination", etc., showing that the S-shaped strip of land is highly appreciated for its cultural resources in tourism development. However, to truly transform cultural resources into economic tourism value, turning cultural tourism into a cultural industry as determined in the Strategy for the Development of Cultural Industries in Vietnam, Vision to 2030, Vietnam's green economy still has a lot to do.
In fact, cultural industrial products have been exploited and developed by many countries around the world to create competitive advantages, position national brands, and strongly attract tourists. For example, with the strong spread of K-pop on an international scale, Korea has built many unique Hallyu cultural discovery tours that have attracted a large number of tourists. Singapore has also been very successful in its strategy to become a leading cultural and artistic destination in the region.
Recently, through bidding, the Lion Island became the only destination in Southeast Asia for Taylor Swift in the framework of The Eras Tour. And with just six live performances, the American pop singer brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Singapore, all 300,000 tickets for the six shows were sold out, from aviation to road transport, tourism, retail services... all benefited. Similarly, the Japanese tourism industry has also made a lot of money from exploiting products in the comic ecosystem, or in the US, the attraction of Hollywood cinema...
In our country, although the cultural industry has only been mentioned in recent years, there have been a number of products that exploit cultural content creatively, contributing to diversifying Vietnam's tourism products, typically live shows with large investments in both content and art such as "Quintessence of the North", "Hoi An Memories", "Dance on the Clouds"...
In early 2024, the Hanoi Department of Tourism announced 15 night tourism products, most of which are based on cultural and heritage strengths, including products such as the Hoa Lo Prison night tour, the Imperial Citadel Decoding tour, the program "Legend of Youth - Living a Life Worth Living" at the Vietnam Women's Museum... which have truly left an unforgettable impression on visitors.
However, it is also necessary to frankly admit that cultural tourism products with identity and the ability to position destination brands in our country are still poor, not to mention the overlap in localities. According to Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Director of the Institute of Tourism Development Research, cultural tourism products in our country are generally not creative, lacking differentiated products between localities and regions.
Many valuable cultural tourism resources have not been invested in and exploited commensurate with their potential, and many valuable cultural resources have not been invested in and exploited into tourism products. According to Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, the development of cultural tourism in our country still lacks synchronization and connection in product development, as well as connection between localities in the process of exploiting cultural resources, so it has not created sustainable quality tourism products.
Many experts believe that in order to turn cultural tourism into a cultural industry, the key issue is to find ways to create cultural products that "touch" the emotions of tourists. To do so, it is necessary to increase the creativity in building tourism products, bringing unique and impressive experiences.
Dr. Nguyen Thu Hanh, President of the Association of Science for Sustainable Tourism Development (STDe), commented: For a long time, tourism has only exploited the past values of cultural heritage and has not exploited the present and future values, so it has not created new points. Moreover, the connection between creative individuals and creative groups is also limited, leading to the failure to create a sustainable value chain for products.
According to Dr. Nguyen Thu Hanh, investing in culture always has many potential challenges and risks, but we still lack mechanisms and policies to attract and protect cultural investors, so we have not been able to mobilize many resources to develop cultural tourism. The STDe Chairman believes that there needs to be a close connection between tourism and the fields of sports, music, cinema, fine arts, etc. to create novelty in product development.
Dr. Trinh Le Anh, Lecturer of the Faculty of Tourism, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi affirmed: The goal of the cultural industry is to find an "output" for the product, and tourism is a great "output" to consume cultural industry products. Tourism needs to "join hands" with entertainment, software, technology, etc. to create products that attract modern tourists, especially young tourists, with special attention paid to exploiting fashion and culinary elements to have products rich in local colors.
Directive No. 30/CT-TTg of the Prime Minister (dated August 29, 2024) on the Development of Vietnam's Cultural Industries emphasized the need to focus on and accelerate the application and exploitation of scientific, technological and technical achievements, along with business skills, creativity, and the promotion of cultural capital and intellectual property rights to create products and services of cultural and economic value. The development of cultural industries must ensure the maximum and effective exploitation of potential and advantages; diversity, multi-sector and multi-sector linkages, etc.
The Prime Minister also requested ministries, branches and localities to focus on implementing a number of tasks and solutions related to mechanisms and policies to support and promote the development of cultural industries; build typical products and services; use digital platforms to create cultural industrial products...
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