Boat racing festival in Can Tho. (Photo: nhandan.vn)

Welcoming fresh momentum from the merger of localities, many businesses are rapidly implementing plans to prepare for development trends in the new administrative landscape of their local areas and the entire region.

Leveraging local culture

Summer tours in the southwestern region of Viet Nam are remarkably diverse, combining signature riverine eco-tours with sea, island, cultural, and spiritual tourism. Recently, at the Phu Quoc Special Zone (An Giang), the Kien Giang Investment, Trade and Tourism Promotion Centre (KITRA), in collaboration with the Kien Giang Tourism Association and related units, launched the summer tourism programme and announced the 2025 tourism stimulus programme.

With the theme of “Kien Giang – Islands Converge, Culture Radiates,” the 2025 tourism stimulus programme focuses on promoting the province’s natural beauty, culture, and history, highlighting distinctive tourism products such as marine, island, ecological, cultural, and culinary tourism. Tran Thanh Tai and his family, from the capital city of Ha Noi, shared during their visit to Mui Nai Tourist Area in Ha Tien Ward, An Giang Province: “There are two beautiful beaches here. Bang Beach exudes the rustic charm of small fishing villages, while No Beach captivates visitors with its gently sloping white sandy shore. At either beach, we found unique beauty and enjoyed fresh, new experiences.”

Summer is also when visitors flock to An Giang on pilgrimages to attend the Festival of Ba Chua Xu Goddess at Sam Mountain, deeply embedded in the southern folk belief. As the largest spiritual event in the Mekong Delta and an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the festival is a standout cultural and spiritual tourism product, drawing significant numbers of tourists to the region.

Lai Thi Hanh, a visitor from Ho Chi Minh City, shared that her family makes this pilgrimage every summer, combining it with leisure travel. This time, they visited Ba Pagoda and Cam Mountain (Thien Cam Son), the tallest peak in the That Son range, which is renowned for its cool climate and magnificent natural scenery. In Can Tho, festival tourism is imbued with the cultural essence of the Kinh, Khmer, and Hoa communities. Tourists can participate in festivals such as Chol Chnam Thmay, Ok Om Bok, Ngo boat racing, Sene Dolta, Cung Phuoc Bien, Thac Con and Nghinh Ong.

New spaces, more attractive products

Recognising trends and traveller demands, the former Soc Trang Provincial People’s Committee recently joined hands with the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee to launch a cooperation programme for developing tourism between Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta provinces and cities in 2025.

Nguyen Van Dung, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, stated that the initiative aims to strengthen links between the city and localities in transportation, trade, culture, and tourism connectivity, thereby advancing each locality’s tourism development and gradually building the region’s tourism brand. This activity contributes to promoting and creating widespread, comprehensive connections across many fields towards sustainability and mutual development.

The initiative also highlights the pivotal role of travel agencies, tourism service providers, and tourism associations in creating genuinely appealing, unique, and distinctive linked tourism products and programmes for each locality and the region as a whole. Moreover, it encourages tourism investment promotion and creates opportunities for business collaboration and development. Accordingly, the tourism sector in Mekong Delta provinces and cities, along with travel companies, has begun surveying and designing new appealing tour routes to attract tourists, while avoiding product duplication.

The programme will run until the third quarter of 2025, beginning with the development of source-origin tours highlighting the historical values of border areas in the provinces of Tay Ninh, Dong Thap, and An Giang. Under the theme “Proud of Borderland Marks”, the programme will also promote tourism in various regions across the country and some European countries.

Currently, the Mekong Delta provinces and cities have officially merged and are operating under a two-tier local government model. As a result, tourism in the region is set to become fresher and broader, aligned with new development spaces and potential.

Specifically, Can Tho City is focusing on leveraging its strengths and directing the development of tourism types and products such as MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) tourism, ecological and river tourism, cultural tourism, and culinary tourism. Can Tho now boasts over 630 accommodation establishments with more than 11,000 rooms, including over 130 hotels rated from 1 to 5 stars. Notably, the city is investing in two hallmark tourism highlights: tours along Xa No Canal, and tours of Lung Ngoc Hoang Nature Reserve and surrounding areas.

The expanded administrative boundaries will enable localities in the region to boost ecological and agricultural tourism characteristic of islets and estuaries, creating space for the development of coastal cultural tourism. In the newly formed An Giang Province, tourism is set to flourish further, particularly through the development of inter-provincial tours such as Chau Doc–Rach Gia–Ha Tien, broader routes like Can Tho–Chau Doc–Rach Gia–Ha Tien, or extended tours linking Ha Noi–Phu Quoc to Ha Tien, and Ha Noi–Phu Quoc–Ha Tien to Can Tho, offering visitors more to experience and discover.