Ho Chi Minh City’s authorities have devised a plan to bolster the city’s waterway tourism in the 2017-2020 period.

Waterway vehicles in HCM City. 

At least seven new waterway tourism programmes will be implemented on the Sai Gon, Dong Nai, Nha Be, Soai Rap and Long Tau rivers and inner canals.

Waterway tourism in the city is expected to receive about 450,000 tourists by 2018 and the figure is projected to increase by 15 percent in the following years.

The HCM City metropolitan area, downstream of the Dong Nai - Sai Gon rivers system, is surrounded and traversed by nearly 1,000 kilometres of rivers and canals, with huge potential for waterway tourism.

Since 2013, the city has allocated funds for 13 berths and wharfs for tourist boats to dock, while 21 others have been funded by private investors.

In all, from 2013 to the third quarter of 2016, the number of tourists buying river tours rose 11.5 per cent to 257,700. But in the first nine months of last year, the number remained unchanged at 68,000, the same as during the first nine months of 2015.

VNA