Exploiting the potential of Central Highlands cultural heritage: Promoting traditional cultural values ​​associated with tourism

According to experts, exploiting the potential of the Central Highlands' cultural heritage requires focusing on conservation in conjunction with tourism development.

Cultural heritages are the core values ​​for developing typical tourism in regions, provinces and cities nationwide. Many tourism products associated with promoting cultural values ​​have also been successfully exploited by localities. Gia Lai is a mountainous province with great potential for traditional culture, especially the intangible cultural heritage of gongs. The whole province currently has over 4,500 sets of gongs, with about 900 skilled gong players. These are human treasures, silently contributing to protecting and promoting the value of the Central Highlands gong cultural space. From the potential, the owner of the intangible cultural heritage of gongs in Gia Lai has been aware of exploiting the value and traditional cultural identity associated with tourism development. Not only is nature endowed with many majestic landscapes, Gia Lai is also a land where many ethnic groups live together. The whole province of Gia Lai has 44 ethnic groups united and living together in clean, beautiful and poetic villages. Each ethnic group possesses and seeks to exploit its own unique cultural heritage. The cultural identity of ethnic groups in Gia Lai is summarized through successive generations, likened to a stream of alluvium that deposits the most quintessential things to create vitality and over time, it settles, forming a unique national cultural identity. Many cultural activities have highlighted traditional cultural values ​​in this land. The cultural resources of Vietnamese ethnic groups are extremely potential, expressed through the system of ethnic cultural heritages, through folk festivals, indigenous knowledge, traditional crafts, cuisine, costumes, etc. This is a source of inspiration and material for developing tourism, music, fashion, cinema associated with preserving the cultural heritage of ethnic groups. "Developing sustainable tourism based on heritage capital is the right strategy. That is also the potential that has been seen from our cultural heritage. However, this strategy needs to be specified by policies and have a legal framework to ensure that there is a connection between tourism development and conservation, balancing the story of exploiting heritage to serve tourism while ensuring policies to preserve heritage, especially policies for people, the subjects of heritage, living with heritage and participating in the story of tourism development, in parallel with preserving the core values ​​of heritage", shared Dr. Le Thi Minh Ly - Member of the National Cultural Heritage Council, Vice President of the Vietnam Cultural Heritage Association. Source: https://vtv.vn/van-hoa-giai-tri/khai-thac-tiem-nang-di-san-van-hoa-tay-nguyen-phat-huy-gia-tri-van-hoa-truyen-thong-gan-voi-du-lich-20241218150348663.htm