International visitors watch an artisan making a bamboo product at a handicraft village
Nguyen Minh Tien, deputy director of the Economic Co-operation Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development made the statement at a meeting about orientation and solution for rural tourism attached with the government’s new rural development plan for the 2021-2025 period organized by the Ministry.
The country currently has 365 rural tourist sites mainly community-based tourism models in which local residents invite tourists to visit their communities with the provision of overnight accommodation.
Along with community-based tourism, according to Mr. Tien, agricultural tourism, eco-tourism, and village tourism are existing in rural areas. During the period of 2016-2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has implemented the One Commune One Product (OCOP) Program and more than 4,900 OCOP products are now available in the country; in which 37 products are in the supply chain in tourism.
According to Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran Thanh Nam and Deputy Director of the General Department of Tourism Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, in order to promote rural tourism development, a coherent policy for tourism is needed. Currently, policy-makers have not had an overall policy on rural tourism at the national level.
To implement the Strategy for Vietnam's Tourism Development to 2030 and the National Target Program on New Rural Development in the 2021-2025 period, it is necessary to plan rural tourism development in sync with the government’s new rural plan focusing the attention on the differences in culture, ecological landscape to create new products and diversify products to attract holiday-makers who will spend more in Vietnam.
The rural tourism development project in association with new rural development in the 2021-2025 period developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism aims to complete the tourist destination network by 2025 in rural areas with at least 200 community-based tourism services and rural tourist attractions which are recognized to meet three-star OCOP standards. Furthermore, according to the rural tourism development project’s goal, at least 50 percent of traditional craft villages participate in the rural tourism value chain.
