On the afternoon of October 2, in Dien Bien Phu city, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism coordinated with the People's Committee of Dien Bien province to organize a seminar on linkage and cooperation in tourism development in the Vietnam - Laos border region.

At the seminar, many destinations in Nghe An are noticed by many travel enterprises

Representatives of 20 provinces sharing the border between Vietnam and Laos attended the seminar. Vietnam consists of the following provinces: Dien Bien, Son La, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue, Quang Nam and Kon Tum. Laos consists of the following provinces: Louangphabang, Huaphanh, Attapeu, Sekong, Xieng Khouang, Bolikhamxay, Khammuane, Savannakhet, Saravane and Phongsaly.

Also attending were more than 50 enterprise leaders participating in the farm trips delegation to survey tourist attractions in Dien Bien province.

Vietnam and Laos share a land border of more than 2,300 km, passing through the administrative boundaries of 10 provinces and cities of each side, which is an area with potential for development, with a strategic location on the East-West economic corridor.

The Vietnam-Laos border area (both in Vietnam and Laos) has diverse and rich resources, high specificity, many similarities but still differences, and has the ability to form a specific area for the area and have the ability to complement each other to enhance the attractiveness. The destinations of the two countries still have many untapped potentials.

In the past years, many cooperation, product development links, tourism promotion activities within the framework of bilateral and multilateral between Vietnam and Laos in general as well as Nghe An and bordering provinces of Laos (Huaphanh, Xieng Khouang, Borikhamxay) have been implemented and achieved certain results, attracting the participation of localities, agencies, associations, tourism enterprises of the two countries and provinces.

With the advantage of road, Nghe An continues to be a traditional destination for tourists from Laos, and Laos is one of the tourist destinations chosen by many Vietnamese in general and Nghe An in particular. With cooperative efforts from both sides, the exchange of tourists from the two countries in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) reached over 1.2 million arrivals, of which Lao tourists to Vietnam reached more than 98,000 arrivals; Vietnamese tourists to Laos reached more than 924,000 arrivals; In the period 2018-2020 Nghe An welcomed 9,326 arrivals from Laos.

At the seminar, the delegates discussed solutions to link and cooperate in tourism development in the Vietnam - Laos border area. Accordingly, it is necessary to combine tourism development with economic development of border localities. The two sides need to focus on researching, reviewing and proposing breakthrough and attractive incentive mechanisms and policies to attract investment capital in transport infrastructure connecting border economic zones to potential tourist destinations; reviewing, researching, amending and supplementing the content of tourism cooperation into the contents of the text of the Trade Agreement between Laos and Vietnam in 2015 into the Agreement on Trade and Tourism Cooperation between Vietnam and Laos.

On the sidelines of the Conference, Nghe An promoted and introduced publications, products, specialties, tourist destinations, etc. to the Lao and Vietnamese delegates.

Chung Hoang

Source: Nghe An Newspaper