Published:  11:56 Saturday - April 15, 2017

Ho Chi Minh City set a target of welcoming seven million international visitors in 2017, announced the Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee, Nguyen Thanh Phong, at a conference between the City’s leaders and travel businesses on April 13.

In order to achieve the target, the cooperation and contributions of travel enterprises in the City are essential.

The City is focusing on upgrading and renovating museums and amusement parks and urgently building a Safari Park in Cu Chi district as well as developing marine tourism in Can Gio district and wharves, contributing to creating favourable conditions for enterprises to draw visitors.

The city has also set out programmes to develop human resources, particularly for tourism sector and is urgently developing a strategy for the development of the city’s tourism sector by 2030.

At the conference, many representatives from travel businesses, hotels and accommodation establishments made comments on the determination of key tourism products as well as plans for major projects in association with modern infrastructure to develop the MICE (meetings-incentives-conventions-events), culinary, medical and inland waterway tourism models.

The enterprises also raised their ideas related to applying for certification of star rating of hotels.

In addition, several travel enterprises emphasised the unfair tourism trade competition via internet, causing losses to customers. They also proposed that the relevant agencies should promote strict solutions and sanctions, avoiding the tarnishing of the City’s image in the eyes of foreigners.

In the first quarter of the year, Ho Chi Minh City has had more than 1,700 travel businesses, including 575 international ones.

NDO