Empowering the community

Tan Hoa tourist village applied virtual reality to visit the village at the International Conference on Rural Tourism recently held in Quang Nam. Photo: VL

From flood center to tourist village

Tan Hoa Commune (Minh Hoa District, Quang Binh Province) is surrounded by limestone mountains and many caves. This is also the flood center of Minh Hoa area every September - November.

Mr. Truong Thanh Duan - Chairman of Tan Hoa Commune People's Committee said that every year when the rainy season comes, people have to go up the mountain to set up tents to avoid the flood. In 2011, some households had the initiative to make rafts by combining 20 - 30 empty barrels, but they could only put their belongings on top, people still had to go up the mountain to set up tents to avoid the flood. Since 2012, some households have improved from rafts to floating houses with 4 stakes fixed at the 4 corners of the house.

From the floating house idea, in 2015, Oxalis Company organized an annual mixed race with rowing, running, climbing, and cave crawling events, gathering 100 domestic and international athletes to participate.

The activity aims to raise funds to build houses that can live with floods. By 2023, Tan Hoa will have nearly 620 floating houses built, ensuring that 100% of households can live with floods and adapt to weather conditions.

Tan Hoa tourism officially developed with cave exploration, trekking, camping in the forest products... from Oxalis in 2014. This enterprise also reorganized homestay activities in floating houses, even in flood weather. More than 120 villagers participate in tourism with an average income of 8 million VND/month.

After 10 years of tourism development, the poverty rate has decreased from over 85% (2010) to 2.65% (2023). In 2023, Tan Hoa was honored by the World Tourism Organization as one of the best villages in the world.

Building mechanisms in rural tourism development

In Quang Nam, decentralization and empowerment of the community in tourism development are quite natural and strong. People are allowed to participate in all tourism activities, create products and benefit from these activities. The State plays a role in creating opportunities and conditions for villages and communities to develop.

The State gives broad authority to people to decide for themselves to develop rural tourism products. Photo: VL

This is most evident in rural villages, community tourism villages, famous craft villages such as Thanh Ha pottery, Tra Que vegetable village, and even Zara weaving village (Nam Giang) where most people agree in their decision-making process.

Mr. Pham Van Luong - Director of Habitat Vietnam Organization believes that empowering the community in Quang Nam tourist villages should be understood as a process of decentralization, delegation of power, capacity building, and awareness raising for people so that they can achieve the goals of sustainable rural tourism development.

Strengthening promotion and public-private cooperation with the active participation of the business community to promote and attract customers, contributing to promoting the consumption of local products...

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hong - Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism shared that the important issue of developing rural tourism in Quang Nam is to promote public-private cooperation through researching support mechanisms for people, communities, and cooperatives; attracting businesses to participate. Currently, Quang Nam has only integrated and mobilized resources for new rural construction, but there is no specific mechanism for rural tourism.

“Previously, the Provincial People's Council also issued Resolution 47 for mountainous tourism, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was only able to do a few things and then stopped. Now we will have to study a new mechanism. In the long term, there must be a specific mechanism strong enough to stimulate demand, call for public-private cooperation, and attract businesses to invest effectively in rural tourism,” said Mr. Hong.

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/trao-quyen-cho-cong-dong-3147172.html