Accordingly, the city tours will introduce to visitors popular sites in Thanh Hoa city, including the Later Le Dynasty imperial temple, the provincial museum, the Dong Son ancient village, the Tien Son cave, the Hoang Long antique museum, the Truc Lam Ham Rong Zen Monastery, C4 Hill and Ham Rong Bridge.

The provincial People’s Committee also announced a project to promote the city’s tourism to 2030 with a view to developing cultural and spiritual tourism, eco-tourism, weekend tourism and MICE in combination with preserving natural values and the ecological environment and promoting national identities.

The city will also focus on luring tourists from Japan, China, Laos, Thailand, France and the US alongside those from other parts of the country, especially the capital city of Hanoi.

To promote its strengths, the city will organise seven tourism spaces, including urban areas, areas along the Ma River, Ham Rong Bridge, An Hoach Mountain, Mat Son Mountain, pine forest resort and Sam Son beach. 

Thanh Hoa plans to invest in recreational centres, ecological and cultural tourism areas and resorts while strengthening human resources training and tourism promotion in a bid to make tourism the city’s spearhead economic sector by 2020.

In 2015, the city received 3.2 million visitors, including close to 100,000 foreigners, and earned US$133 million from tourism activities.

At present, 42,900 locals are engaging in the tourism sector, of whom 14,300 are direct and 26,800 are indirect workers.