When factories and industrial parks become tourist destinations

Industrial tourism is opening a new direction for Ho Chi Minh City, with the key being the connection between industrial parks and travel businesses.

Many international tourist groups come to Ho Chi Minh City under MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences) tourism - Photo: QUANG DINH

To effectively exploit its potential, Ho Chi Minh City's tourism industry needs the cooperation of industrial parks, travel businesses and state management agencies.

Lack of tourism products for experts and investors

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang - a tour guide in Ho Chi Minh City - said that in nearly ten years of working in the profession, only once did the travel company cooperate with a ceramic enterprise (in the former Binh Duong province) to bring international tourists to visit the factory, technology line, showroom, experience and buy products.

Mr. Tu Quy Thanh, director of Lien Bang Tourism Company, said that previously there was a tour taking international tourists to the industrial park to visit an information technology factory. These international tourists were also businesses in the semiconductor chip sector, visiting manufacturing plants in Vietnam. However, since this group of tourists, the industrial park has not been interested in cooperation.

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"Industrial enterprises responded that they did not receive much benefit, and the procedures had to go through the city's trade promotion and development center. Both businesses felt that factory and industrial park tours were not really attractive and not feasible," said Mr. Thanh.

Meanwhile, Dr. Duong Duc Minh, deputy director of the Institute for Economic and Tourism Development Research, said that industrial tourism in Ho Chi Minh City has yet to develop a deep level of products aimed at experts, investors and workers in new urban industrial parks.

The main reason comes from the lack of a flexible operating mechanism to create product and service chains that meet the needs and cultural characteristics of this customer group.

Need to orient tourism-industry hyperlinkage

Industrial tourism is a form of tourism that uses the available resources of traditional industries. This form of tourism encourages production areas, factories, and showrooms of enterprises to combine with tourism products and experiential activities to create complex tourist destinations. With the fact that the parties have not been interested in combining, before the opportunity to merge Ho Chi Minh City into a megacity, many solutions for industrial tourism are proposed.

According to Ms. Huynh Phan Phuong Hoang, Deputy General Director of Vietravel, the tourism industry itself cannot develop industrial tourism. These products need to be built systematically, with the participation of both travel businesses and management units of industrial parks and new urban areas. State agencies are the connecting units.

Recognizing the formation and development of technology parks and urban industrial parks as the crystallization of intellectual and professional labor flows, according to Dr. Minh, it is necessary to redesign the corresponding tourism service structure.

"If we do not quickly design tourism service structures that are compatible with the movement and consumption habits of these groups, the tourism industry will miss out on a source of demand with high spending capacity but difficult to serve without the right touchpoint solutions," said Mr. Minh.

This expert affirmed that we cannot rely on the unilateral goodwill of "new urban industrial zones" in integrating tourism into their development strategies. Tourism cannot play a supporting role, but needs a strategy to orient the hyperlink model between tourism and industry into a value chain according to an equal and harmonious mechanism, reflected in the distribution of benefits and consensus in the perception of economic development potential.

Specifically, Mr. Minh proposed that the process should be organized sequentially with assigned tasks.

First, "devalue" the forms of production activities that are overwhelming the spiritual life in industrial zones, then move on to "devalue" closed consumption models with little interaction, then proceed to "stabilize value" by making tourism a tool to balance labor productivity and quality of life.

When there are specialized tourism products for professionals, integrated with relaxation, tourism value will increase; living industrial spaces will be formed, no longer accompanying tourism services but deeply attached to the local industry.

Each industrial park is a unit that can activate the tourism model.

Industrial tourism is a type of tourism that involves visits and activities to a location that allows visitors to learn about processes and know-how of the past, present or future, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Businesses believe that to have a chain of tourism experiences, it is important to organize a soft institutional infrastructure, including information systems, product filters, cultural consumption support centers for experts and workers, fast-moving services integrated with technology, and emotional highlights in the chain of utilities.

Ho Chi Minh City will have hundreds of industrial parks and export processing zones.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies, after the merger, Ho Chi Minh City has 66 export processing zones and industrial parks, with a total land area of over 27,000 hectares. According to the vision plan to 2050, Ho Chi Minh City will have 105 export processing zones and industrial parks with a total planning area of over 49,000 hectares, becoming the leading industrial center of the country. In addition, the economic locomotive owns the largest and most dynamic industrial enterprise force in the country.

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Source: https://tuoitre.vn/khi-nha-may-khu-cong-nghiep-tro-thanh-diem-den-du-lich-20250817080721815.htm