Experience flying in the sky through the hot air balloon festival

See the beauty of Vietnam from the sky

Held from October 26 to October 29, 2024, the “Trang An - Cuc Phuong Hot Air Balloon Festival 2024” promises to bring visitors extremely impressive experiences about the majestic beauty of Trang An Scenic Complex and Cuc Phuong National Park.

Mr. Bui Van Manh, Director of Ninh Binh Province Department of Tourism, said: As part of the series of events celebrating the 10th anniversary of Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex being recognized as a World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Ninh Binh has planned to organize the first "Hot Air Balloon Festival" in the locality.

This is an opportunity for the province to have new, modern, unique and special tourism products, contributing to diversifying tourism products, creating attractiveness and attracting a large number of people and domestic and international tourists. At the same time, it enhances the promotion of the image of the tourism destination brand, culture, people, potential and advantages of tourism development of Ninh Binh province.

The festival has 35 hot air balloons and paragliders, including 13 hot air balloons and 22 paragliders, controlled by foreign pilots and the Hanoi Paragliding Club. The opening ceremony will take place on the morning of October 26 at Trang An Cultural Park. The time for people and tourists to experience free flying and hanging hot air balloons is from 7:00 to 9:00 and from 16:30 to 21:00. For sightseeing and taking photos, check in with the hot air balloon performance is held from 7:30 to 9:30 and from 15:30 every day. The festival will perform 2 forms of hot air balloon flying: free flying and hanging.

Trang An - Cuc Phuong Hot Air Balloon Festival promises to bring visitors an extremely impressive experience and an interesting, unforgettable feeling when admiring from above the beautiful, majestic space of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage - Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex and Cuc Phuong National Park, 6 consecutive years honored as "Asia's Leading National Park".

In addition, during the festival days, visitors will enjoy the light show and the "Heritage Fragrance" Fashion Show, showcasing national costumes.

Recently, many provinces and cities have organized hot air balloon festivals to attract tourists. On September 1, 2024, the first "Hot Air Balloon Festival" took place at 30/10 Square, Ha Long City (Quang Ninh Province), attracting a large number of tourists and locals to visit and experience. The festival features 20 hot air balloons of different colors and sizes. Within the framework of the festival, there will be many diverse activities such as: Hot air balloon hanging; visiting inside the hot air balloon; hot air balloon flower lantern night; hot air balloons decorating the ground and parachute performance.

From April 27 to May 1, 2024, at Nguyen Tat Thanh Square, Tuyen Quang city, Tuyen Quang province, the 3rd "Tuyen Quang International Hot Air Balloon Festival" was held. This is a highlight event in response to the Tuyen Quang Province Tourism Year 2024. Participating in this year's Festival are 22 international standard hot air balloons piloted by experienced pilots from many countries.

The fourth hot air balloon festival "Hue Ancient Capital seen from the sky" will take place from June 25 to June 30, 2022 at Ham Nghi yard inside Hue Citadel, bringing a unique landscape with dozens of giant hot air balloons with brilliant colors and diverse shapes flying together in the sky of Hue Ancient Capital, adding to Hue Citadel with the breath of the new era full of vitality and a very lively desire to explore.

In April 2022, Kon Tum province organized the Hot Air Balloon Festival to stimulate tourism in Kon Tum. The performances of 25 hot air balloons with a maximum height of 50m, created a beautiful scene for people and tourists to visit, experience and take souvenir photos. In particular, at the "Flower Lantern Night" program, the Organizing Committee "blew fire" into the hot air balloon cages. At this time, the hot air balloons shined like giant lanterns shimmering in the sky to the sound of gongs, cymbals, and the sinus rhythm of 300 artisans dancing the sinus circle below the hot air balloons, with sparkling lights. Previously, the hot air balloon festival was also held in Da Nang, Lai Chau... attracting tens of thousands of visitors.

Be careful when organizing

Currently, there are about 267 hot air balloon festivals in the world each year, with 167 in the US alone. A 10-day hot air balloon event in the US in 2023 helped the locality attract over 1 million international tourists and earn 182 million USD. This shows that the attraction of hot air balloon festivals around the world is huge.

Hot air balloon festival attracts many visitors. (Photo: Duc Duong)

Hot air ballooning is not only a fun activity in the air, but also creates beautiful, eye-catching visual effects and if there is a good communication message, it will attract tourists. With beautiful shapes, bright colors and the ability to fly with a pilot, hot air ballooning will bring many experiences to tourists.

During events, hot air balloons also have the ability to promote brands and events with eye-catching content and images attached to the hot air balloon, creating good effects.

However, organizing a hot air balloon festival is not simple. There have been a few festivals where the organizers have announced the postponement of the hot air balloon festival flight schedule. Explaining the postponement of the hot air balloon flight schedule, the organizers said that because of technical factors and hot air balloon activities, they depend a lot on the weather at the venue. In strong windy and hot weather conditions, hot air balloon activities cannot be carried out. The program of experiencing hot air balloon flights in urban areas will not take place as announced. At some hot air balloon festivals that were postponed, visitors were surprised, some were upset because they had to travel far away, spend time, endure the crowding, and pay entrance fees to get to the hot air balloon festival, but in the end, they could not see and experience hot air balloons flying as advertised.

There was also a hot air balloon festival, while the hot air balloon was being inflated with hot air, strong winds caused a fire to spread, the pilot and 4 people were slightly injured, causing many tourists to worry and cancel their tickets. There was also a festival, some hot air balloons landed on the highway, endangering the pilots, tourists experiencing the flight as well as people traveling on the highway.

It can be seen that to have a successful festival season, attracting and satisfying tourists, professional organization from the organizing committee is needed.

At the Trang An - Cuc Phuong Hot Air Balloon Festival, hot air ballooning and paragliding are new and adventurous forms of tourism, so ensuring security and safety is a top priority. The Ninh Binh Department of Tourism has requested the Hot Air Balloon Association and Ballooning Media International Hot Air Balloon Company Limited to only organize the above event after completing all relevant procedures (fire and explosion prevention and control, flight licensing, etc.) according to current regulations of the State.

At the same time, preside over and coordinate with the unit organizing the hot air balloon flight to select experienced pilots with expertise in hot air balloon flying, ensuring quality and safety; develop a detailed flight schedule, ensuring suitability and effectiveness. Actively coordinate to implement conditions and procedures for foreign pilots and assistants participating in controlling hot air balloons at the event. Relevant units need to focus on developing plans to ensure security and order, traffic safety, fire prevention, fire fighting and rescue; deploy medical and insurance measures to ensure safe service for visitors and delegates.

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/trai-nghiem-bay-tren-bau-troi-qua-le-hoi-khinh-khi-cau-post529808.html