Ho Chi Minh City introduces 5 new river tourism routes

Ho Chi Minh City today introduced five new waterway tours, which have the potential to become unique products of local tourism.

Five new river tours were introduced by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism within the framework of the first Ho Chi Minh City River Festival from August 4 to August 6, including the Nhieu Loc - Thi Nghe inner-city tour route, the Binh Quoi route, the Cu Chi and Can Gio tour route (departing from Bach Dang Wharf), and the route connecting to the Southeast and Western provinces or to Cambodia.

Ho Chi Minh City's waterway tourism products provide experiences of landscape, architecture, culture, history and typical ecosystems of the basins of several major rivers, namely Dong Nai River, Tien River, Hau River and the largest coastal island in Vietnam.

These tour programs are being exploited by a number of travel agencies in the city such as Vietravel , Vietluxtour, TST Tourist, Chim Canh Penguin Travel JSC.

Binh An river bus station in Thu Duc City. Photo: Bich Phuong — Binh An river bus station in Thu Duc City. Photo: *Bich Phuong*

Ms. Huynh Phan Phuong Hoang, Deputy General Director of Vietravel, assessed that the 5 new river tourism products are spread evenly on the main routes of the city, from the inner city center to the suburbs and the East - Southwest region. These will be potential products, creating more opportunities for domestic and foreign tourists to experience and learn about Ho Chi Minh City, and will be the basis for connecting inter-regional routes in the future.

"The limitation of river tourism products is that they are not attractive enough to tourists due to the lack of diversity in products and services. The current river tourism route lacks the number of stops and is limited in both quality and attractiveness," said Ms. Hoang.

Ms. Tran Thi Bao Thu, Director of Marketing and Communications Department of Vietluxtour, commented that Ho Chi Minh City has quite good geographical tourism factors in terms of terrain, water flow, and landscape to develop river tourism. This type of product, if developed in a diverse way, will attract not only international tourists but also domestic and local tourists.

However, river tourism products are currently mainly river cruises and culinary programs, lacking the festival colors as well as the outstanding characteristics of the river culture of the South in general and Ho Chi Minh City in particular.

These products are mainly short-range products with quite diverse prices that can better suit the needs of domestic customers.

Explaining this, Ms. Thu said that domestic tourists often like festive programs and short tours to relax on weekends or after work. Most importantly, after the event, these tours are still maintained regularly and are often promoted and renewed to always remind and stimulate domestic tourists.

With the advantage of possessing a 23 km long coastline and a dense network of rivers and canals with a density of up to 3.38 km/km2 and 80 km of Saigon River flowing through, the city's tourism and transportation industries can coordinate to organize many inner-city cruise routes, short-range and medium-range routes by river bus and high-speed boat.

Bich Phuong - Van Khanh

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