Feasting the eyes with tree-lined tracks, typical Hue-style garden houses, ancient ruong houses, as well as the making of paper lotus and incense sticks are among a thousands of things that impress foreigners when engaging in a community-based tours in Thua Thien-Hue province.
Bestowed with stunning landscapes, cultural charm of an imperial city, and diverse cultures of ethnic minorities, the central coastal locality boasts huge potential to branch out community-based tourism.
However, the development of this model still lags behind expectation as poor infrastructure, lack of attractive tours, and unqualified human resources make the community-based tourism lure only some 300,000 visitors a year.
Local authorities have decided to carry out several policies to support community-based tourism until 2025. Accordingly, more than 30.8 trillion VND (1.33 billion USD) will be earmarked to help 14 community-based tourism sites improve services and infrastructure, 70 percent of which comes from the province’s budget, and the remainder are corresponding funds of districts, township and Hue city.
A maximum of 2 billion VND will be allocated to the construction of a road connecting national highway, provincial road, and district roads with one tourism site, while expenditure to upgrade and build new inner road at the site is 1.5 billion USD.
About 200 million VND is set aside for the construction of a parking lot.
Besides, owner of each accommodation facility with three rooms or more is supported with a maximum 100 million VND to build new rooms, and 50 million VND to repair the infrastructure.
In addition, money will be used to help local people restore folk art performances, traditional crafts and cuisine, as well as develop eco-tourism products.
The tourism sector will organise vocational training courses on community-based tourism and foreign language training classes, helping local business owners and tour guides provide good services to the visitors.