Ho Chi Minh City's tourism industry has made great strides since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, making positive contribution to the city's overall growth, especially in the goals of the 2020-2025 term.
The city's tourism has been constantly positioning its brand, becoming a green, friendly, and vibrant destination for domestic and international visitors.
Positive growth from “new winds”
In late October 2024, more than 5,000 international tourists from Europe, the U.S., Australia, etc. on cruise ships, Quantum of the Seas and Celebrity Millennium, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. The guests were served by Saigontourist Travel Services Company Limited (Saigon Tourism Corporation). They visited popular destinations, including Reunification Hall - Independence Palace, Ho Chi Minh City Central Post Office, Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History, Notre Dame Cathedral, and experienced cultural, entertainment and shopping activities.
International visitors touring the center of Ho Chi Minh City
According to Doan Thi Thanh Tra, Director of the Marketing and Communications Department of Saigon Tourism Corporation, in the first ten months of this year, the corporation has welcomed a number of large international cruise ships to Ho Chi Minh City for sightseeing and experiences. Thanks to the effective recovery strategy, the city’s tourism has become more attractive. The “Ho Chi Minh City welcomes you - Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City” program has attracted many tourists to the city by air, road, rail, and sea.
The city also launched the “Ho Chi Minh City - 100 interesting things” program to popularize cultural-historical-artistic tourism products, community tourism, eco-tourism, MICE tourism (combination of tourism and seminars, incentives, conferences and exhibitions), medical tourism, and golf tourism.
Currently, the city is known as a locality of festivals and events, an urban area with vibrant nightlife. Many typical festivals have promoted tourism strengths, attracting domestic and foreign tourists to the city, such as Vietnamese lunar New Year Festival, river festival, “ao dai” festival, tourism festival, among others.
Along with domestic promotion activities, the city has promoted these activities in international markets, such as the U.S., Germany, Singapore, and Southeast Asia, contributing to enhancing the tourism brand of Ho Chi Minh City on the world tourism map. Therefore, many international tourists choose Ho Chi Minh City as a safe, friendly, and vibrant destination.
Green tourism, sustainable connections
At the World MICE Awards 2024, Ho Chi Minh City won in all three important categories, namely “Asia’s Best MICE Destination,” “Asia’s Best Incentive Destination,” and “Asia’s Best MICE Tradeshow 2024.” The awards have affirmed that Ho Chi Minh City is both a unique tourist destination and the city oriented to develop into a major tourist connection point in Asia.
Foreign tourists visiting Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History
As an economic, cultural, entertainment and tourism center, Ho Chi Minh City has conducted tourism promotion activities based on the characteristics of target segments, focusing on key markets, such as Northeast Asia (Japan, the RoK, China), North America (the U.S., Canada), Western Europe (Germany, the U.K., France), Australia and Southeast Asia. Together with attracting and stimulating tourism, the city has paid much attention to green and sustainable tourism in harmony with cultural, social and environmental values to create a difference for tourists.
According to Bui Thi Ngoc Hieu, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism, the city's tourism has implemented eight groups of synchronous solutions to promote the tourism industry’s development and develop four main product groups with large revenue sources. They are cultural-historical tourism, MICE tourism, culinary tourism, and shopping tourism. Implementing the Government's Resolution No.82/NQ-CP on the main tasks and solutions to accelerate recovery and speed up effective and sustainable tourism development, green transition has served as the core in building strategies, planning investment, setting up tours, routes, and destinations of the city's tourism industry.
Over the past time, community tourism tours, tourism in combination with tree planting, cycling, environmental cleaning, and others have been increasingly organized in the city. Attentively, the community tourism model in Thieng Lieng island hamlet is oriented to become one of the Net Zero destinations (carbon neutral destinations). Meanwhile, the city has gradually conducted green transition for tourism products. Each district builds a typical tourism product to promote the development of the value chain of culture, cuisine, and commerce.
The highlight of the city’s tourism, over the past time, has been defining regional linkage as a sustainable strategy to create inter-regional and inter-route products according to the “one route - many destinations” motto. Currently, local people and tourists are voting for 50 attractive tourist destinations in Ho Chi Minh City and 13 localities in the Mekong Delta. This is a practical activity to implement the viewpoint of Ho Chi Minh City and localities nationwide on raising tourism product quality and diversifying services.
Nguyen Van Dung, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, underlined that in order for the city's tourism to be attractive to visitors, it is necessary to preserve local culture, the unique features of destinations and the development of a modern urban area. The city is persistent in developing green tourism, effectively promoting domestic and international connectivity to help the city's tourism breakthrough into a spearhead economic sector.
Translated by Quynh Oanh