The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on May 26^th announced the master plan tourism development in the South Central Coast of Vietnam by 2020 with a vision for 2030, approved by the Prime Minister on December 24^th, 2014.

The South Central Coast of Vietnamincludes Da Nang city and the seven provinces of Quang Nam, QuangNgai, BinhDinh, Phu Yen, KhanhHoa, NinhThuan and BinhThuan, covering nearly 44,376.9 km2.

Ly Son island in Quang Ngai province. (Source: VNA)

The overall plan will focus on developing both domestic and foreign tourist markets, with the target at attracting Northeastern Asian, Russian, East European, Southeast Asian, Indian and Turkish markets; developing recreation tourism, tourism products in combination with world cultural heritage sites and organising space for tourism development such as tourism areas, destinations and routes.

In addition, investing in developing tourism by budget capital (including ODA), FDI capital and capital mobilized from organisations and enterprises and prioritizing investment in 9 national tourism areas, 6 national tourism destinations and 4 tourism development programmes were included in the overall plan.

The overall plan set the specific objectives of attracting 15 million tourist arrivals, of which, international tourists are hoped to reach about 4.5 million arrivals by 2020 and 25 million domestic and 7.5 million foreign arrivals by 2030. The total revenue is expected to reach VND70 trillion by 2020 and with the goal of VND160 trillion by 2030.

Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Dang Thi Bich Lien said that the overall objectives of the plan were to exploit the potential and advantages of the region to develop sea-island tourism into the leading strength of the country’s tourism sector. Developing modern urban tourism areas and national tourism facilities with superior services was another objective.

The country strives to turn tourism into an important economic sector by 2020 and a key economic sector in the economic structure of the region by 2030, contributing to asserting national sovereignty and sovereignty rights on Vietnam’s sea and islands./.

( Hoang Vy )