Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Thao, Head of Tourism Resource Development Planning Department, Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism, analyzed tourism opportunities when Ho Chi Minh City names new wards - Photo: THAO THUONG
On April 21, in the program introducing tourism activities in response to the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day, Ms. Nguyen Thi Anh Hoa, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism, said that she will coordinate with cultural experts, researchers, and the business community to research and implement the plan to "restructure" Ho Chi Minh City's tourism products in conjunction with the arrangement and reorganization of commune-level administrative units that has just been approved by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council.
It is also associated with "repositioning" the identity of the city's tourism products. Thereby creating competitive appeal for Ho Chi Minh City tourism in the common market.
Opportunity to create tours associated with themes and heritage spaces
Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Thao - Head of Tourism Resource Development Planning Department, Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism - assessed that this is an opportunity to reposition the industry and renew tourism products when there is a new location associated with the history of formation.
"For example, when going to Ho Chi Minh City, saying go to District 1, District 3, District 5 will not evoke images for tourists as much as going to Saigon Ward, Cho Lon Ward, Gia Dinh Ward, attaching the story of each place. Tourism can restructure and renew products.
We have every opportunity to create themed tours and design heritage spaces. Each ward has its own story, and localities can create many unique products,” said Ms. Thao.
Ms. Thao also suggested a new direction for tourism: "Talking about Saigon means talking about prosperity and bustle, there will be exciting tours. Talking about Gia Dinh means talking about the cultural space of the South, or Saigon night market, Ben Thanh street festival...
The new administrative unit has the feeling of belonging to the community, the subject of that region. Then the people will participate in preserving and creating the culture of the land. That is a great opportunity to do tourism and make an impression on visitors."
A step towards forming a mega-urban tourism ecosystem
From the perspective of a tourism business, sharing with Tuoi Tre Online, a representative of Vietluxtour said that keeping or renaming place names associated with the city's culture and history helps create the unique soul of tourism products; connecting and inheriting the culture and history of old Saigon to present-day Ho Chi Minh City.
International visitors in Ho Chi Minh City - Photo: THAO THUONG
"This is really meaningful not only for domestic tourists but also impressive and convenient for foreign visitors to learn about Ho Chi Minh City tourism information. This is also an opportunity to renew the Ho Chi Minh City tourism map.
And the city also needs to unify its tourism communication strategy, so that from the people to the travel companies there will be synchronization and consistency in spreading tourism promotion messages," said a representative of Vietluxtour.
From the perspective of tourism development, Dr. Duong Duc Minh - Deputy Director of the Institute for Economic and Tourism Development Research - sees this as not only an administrative management problem, but also an important step in forming a tourism ecosystem of the megacity.
"The tourism frontier of Ho Chi Minh City is expanding in an unprecedented way. The city is facing the opportunity to comprehensively integrate ecological spaces: sea and islands, heritage, and creative technology of Binh Duong, Ho Chi Minh City, and Ba Ria - Vung Tau.
This is the foundation for the strategy of diversifying products according to specific ecological spaces; it is the condition for defining tourism products according to the symbol of community identity," Mr. Minh emphasized.
Ho Chi Minh City will become a multi-center tourist super city.
Mr. Minh believes that the image of Ho Chi Minh City in the future is no longer limited to the idea of "a central destination", but rather a multi-center tourist megacity, where visitors can move quickly, experience deeply, and live fully in a series of personalized journeys designed according to "emotional zoning".
"In the context of increasingly deep globalization, travel behavior is changing towards personalizing the journey. Therefore, repositioning is also a strategy to shape the destination's symbol, creating new attraction by exploiting the depth of old culture.
When names like Gia Dinh and Saigon "return" to urban life with creative tourism thinking. That is the way the city preserves memories not through nostalgia, but through the act of designing the future," Mr. Minh emphasized.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/sap-nhap-va-ten-phuong-moi-tai-tp-hcm-co-hoi-de-tai-dinh-vi-lam-moi-san-pham-du-lich-20250421205709103.htm
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