This was the view shared by many enterprises, administrators and specialists at a meeting on tourism potentialities of the Mekong Delta held by Sai Gon Tiep Thi newspaper on Tuesday.
The reason why tourists are not interested in this rich land, which have been discussed over and over, is the lack of orientation and cooperation among locales there. Therefore, their tourism products overlap with each other, leading tourists to visit only one locality and ignore others.
Tourism in the Mekong Delta is short of services and labor force, and the Mekong delta tour programs have been repetitive for years without changes and upgrade. Several historical relics and fruit gardens that used to attract many visits are now in dreary rundown.
'With fewer tourists than other regions, short stay and low ratio of tourists' return, tourism in the delta is on the downtrend,' said Nguyen Tuan Hoa, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Development Learning Center.
The problem is not fresh with already known causes but no specific solution is introduced. 'Several seminars have been held to discuss the tourism potentialities of the delta but nothing is done after that. It's time for localities to join hands to offer more attractive tour packages and avoid overlaps,' said Nguyen Van My, director of Lua Viet Travel Company.
These overlaps consist of Mekong boat trips visiting fruit gardens, and enjoying don ca tai tu (Southern opera), which are included in the tour programs to any province in the Mekong Delta.
Representatives of some local departments of culture, sport and tourism said the local tourism sector has difficulty creating products and investment. For example, An Giang Province is striving to obtain the tourist's stay length of two days in 2015 and increase revenue per tourist higher than the current VND500,000 but the solution remains unknown.
Therefore, despite the large number of visitors to the province, the actual number of arrivals is low. For instance, Ba Chua Xu festival attracts 3.5 million visits every year, but two million of them are local people with repeated visits.
However, Tran Dat Duy, vice chairman of the Mekong Delta Tourism Association, ascribed the subjective point of view to the underdeveloped tourism of the region. The tourism itself has not proved its contribution to the economy so as to capture authorities' attention for investment and development.
'The Mekong Delta authorities plan to make Phu Quoc an international tourism center in coming years, but there is no plan for human resource training,' Phu said.
Source: thesaigontimes
