In recent years, Vietnam's repeated accolades from the World Travel Awards, such as "World's Leading Heritage Destination," "Asia's Leading Cultural Destination," and "Asia's Leading Culinary Destination," demonstrate the high regard for cultural resources in tourism development across the country. However, to truly transform cultural resources into economic tourism value and turn cultural tourism into a cultural industry, as outlined in Vietnam's Strategy for the Development of Cultural Industries, with a vision to 2030, the Vietnamese green economy still has much work to do.
In fact, cultural industry products have been exploited and developed by many countries around the world to create a competitive advantage, position national brands, and strongly attract tourists. For example, with the strong spread of K-pop on an international scale, South Korea has created many unique Hallyu cultural tours, which have attracted a large number of tourists. Singapore has also been very successful in its strategy of positioning itself as a leading cultural and artistic destination in the region.
Recently, through a bidding process, Singapore became the sole Southeast Asian destination for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour. With just six live performances, the American pop star generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Singapore, with all 300,000 tickets for the six nights selling out. Airlines, road transport, tourism, and retail services all benefited. Similarly, Japan's tourism industry also profited handsomely from exploiting products within its comic book ecosystem, and the US benefited from the allure of Hollywood films…
In Vietnam, although the cultural industry has only been discussed in recent years, several products have emerged that creatively exploit cultural content, contributing to the diversification of Vietnamese tourism products. Typical examples include large-scale live performance shows with significant investment in both content and artistry, such as "The Quintessence of Northern Vietnam," "Memories of Hoi An," and "Dance on the Clouds"...
In early 2024, the Hanoi Department of Tourism announced 15 night tourism products, mostly based on the strengths of culture and heritage. Among them, products such as the Hoa Lo Prison night tour, the Imperial Citadel decoding tour, and the "Legend of Youth - Living a Life Worth Living" program at the Vietnam Women's Museum... have truly left an unforgettable impression on tourists.
However, it must be frankly acknowledged that cultural tourism products with unique characteristics and the potential to establish a destination brand in our country are still scarce, not to mention the duplication across different localities. According to Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Director of the Institute for Tourism Development Research, cultural tourism products in our country generally lack creativity and distinctiveness between localities and regions.
Many valuable cultural tourism resources have not been invested in and exploited to their full potential, and many valuable cultural resource sites have not been developed into tourism products. According to Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, the development of cultural tourism in Vietnam lacks synchronization and linkage in product development, as well as linkage between localities in the process of exploiting cultural resources, thus failing to create sustainable, high-quality tourism products.
Many experts believe that, in order to transform cultural tourism into a cultural industry, the key issue is to find ways to create cultural products that "touch" the emotions of tourists. To achieve this, it is necessary to increase the creativity in developing tourism products, offering unique and memorable experiences.
Dr. Nguyen Thu Hanh, President of the Sustainable Tourism Development Science Association (STDe), stated: For a long time, tourism has mainly exploited the values of cultural heritage from the past, without exploring the values of the present and future, thus failing to create new attractions. Furthermore, the collaboration between creative individuals and groups is limited, leading to a lack of sustainable value chains for tourism products.
According to Dr. Nguyen Thu Hanh, investing in culture always involves many challenges and risks, but we still lack mechanisms and policies to attract and protect cultural investors, thus failing to mobilize many resources for the development of cultural tourism. The Chairman of STDe believes that there needs to be close links between tourism and other fields such as sports, music, film, and fine arts to create novelty in product development.
Dr. Trinh Le Anh, Lecturer at the Faculty of Tourism, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, affirmed: The goal of the cultural industry is to find an "outlet" for its products, and tourism is an excellent "outlet" for consuming cultural industry products. Tourism needs to "join forces" with entertainment, software, technology, etc., to create products that attract modern tourists, especially young tourists, with particular emphasis on exploiting fashion and culinary elements to create products rich in local characteristics.
Prime Minister's Directive No. 30/CT-TTg (dated August 29, 2024) on the Development of Vietnam's Cultural Industries emphasized the importance of accelerating the application and exploitation of scientific and technological achievements, business skills, creative capacity, and the utilization of cultural capital and intellectual property rights to create products and services with cultural and economic value. The development of cultural industries must ensure the maximum and effective exploitation of potential and advantages; diversification and multi-sectoral linkages…
The Prime Minister also requested ministries, sectors, and localities to focus on implementing a number of tasks and solutions related to mechanisms and policies to support and promote the development of cultural industries; building distinctive products and services; and using digital platforms to create cultural industry products...
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