Khanh Hoa Tourism: World Class Destination

 

Located along the south central coast of Vietnam, Khanh Hoa has varied terrain with mountains and hills interweaving with the sea and plain, forming many beautiful landscapes such as Vong Phu Mountain, Tam Phong Mountains, Nha Trang Bay, Van Phong Bay, Cam Ranh Bay, Dai Lanh beach, Doc Let beach, Hon Tre Island, Hon Thi Island and many others. The province has many historical and cultural heritages namely Dien Khanh Citadel, Dien Khanh Literature Temple, Phu Vinh ancient village and many carnivals creating local unique identities.

 

With its strength, over the years, Khanh Hoa has paid attention to tourism development planning, building policies to encourage and support investment in this sector; increasing investment in order to diversify and improve the quality of tourism products to international level; promoting tourism collaboration with other provinces to help exploit reasonably and effectively the advantages of tourism resources with specific characteristics of each locality in order to diversify tourism products.

 

The province has also focused on strengthening environmental management for tourism, security and safety for visitors to make Nha Trang - Khanh Hoa a destination for both domestic and foreign tourists.

 

Khanh Hoa tourism has managed to develop and achieve encouraging results, most tourism indicators increased from 15 - 20 percent year-on-year. Especially in 2014, Khanh Hoa tourism welcomed 3.6 million visitors, an increase of 19.68 percent year-on-year, of which foreign tourists were over 847,000, up 19.50 percent; the total revenue reached VND6 trillion, up nearly 24.78 percent (net revenue in tourism, irrespective of social income). In 2015, Khanh Hoa tourism has set the goal to welcome 4 million visitors, including 1 million international tourists, tourism revenue of VND7,200 billion.

 

Together with the success in attracting visitors, over the past time Khanh Hoa has successfully organised numerous events, conferences and seminars on national and international level, such as the 22nd APEC Financial Experts Conference as part of APEC XIV-2006 in Vietnam, the ASEAN deputy foreign minister conference in 2006, the 14th ASEAN Finance Ministers Meeting (AFMM 14) in 2010. Especially, the Miss Universe is the first beauty contest of international level held in Vietnam.

 

Investment in construction of transport infrastructure priorities is a priority that Khanh Hoa has always been put one step ahead with rapid and sustainable pace.

Identifying sea and island as its strength, Khanh Hoa tourism has focused strongly on developing high quality sea resort tourism combining with marine recreation, sightseeing and exploring the ocean, such as parachute-pulled canoeing, jet skiing, scuba diving, etc and plans to continue to organise the games of water fly-diving using water pressure equipment and undersea walk. Khanh Hoa has also paid due attention to developing mountainous, forestry and countryside tourism products such as: adventurous mountain climbing, waterfall showering, wild monkeys watching, visiting the countryside and traditional villages; developing the service of hot mineral bath in resorts; festivals and folklore activities are also under development to be put into service of tourism, such as: Gong Festival, Ponagar Temple Festival and various traditional art programs. Among them, Khanh Hoa Sea Festival has become a special event held every two years.

 

Along with the investment in infrastructure, products and travel types development, Khanh Hoa also set priority on the training of human resources, the work of information dissemination and education aimed at improving people's awareness on tourism, the enhancement of tourism environmental management, security and safety for tourists. Thus, human resources of Khanh Hoa tourism have good skills to meet the current development requirements; the tourism environmental in the province increasingly improved and undergoing positive changes have helped reassure tourists as well as investors and businesses.

 

With its high and diverse potential, Khanh Hoa is confident moving towards the goal of becoming a top tourist destination not only in Vietnam but also at regional and international levels.