Tra Vinh (VNA) – More tourists have come to the Mekong Deltaprovince of Tra Vinh, a wonderland of diverse destinations that deliver big onexcellent architecture, history and beauty.

Along with stunning landscapes of mangrove forests and islets on Tien and HauRivers, Tra Vinh boasts many popular attractions like Ba Dong sea, Ba Om pond,a wide range of national intangible cultural heritages, ancient houses, lushorchard gardens, and 142 Khmer pagodas built with classical architecture.

Realizing that the province has not tapped its tourism potential to the fullestover the past years, local authorities have outlined an ambitious plan todevelop tourism into a spearhead economic sector. It eyes to welcome 2.5million travellers by 2025, including 85,000 foreigners, and gain more than 1.6trillion VND (68.94 million USD) in tourism revenue from 2025.

According to Director of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports andTourism Duong Hoang Sum, preferential policies have been penned to attractinvestment in tourism technical infrastructure and promotion campaigns enhancedboth inside and outside the nation.

Overriding priority is to build Ba Om pond tourism complex into a nationaltourism site, he said, adding the province is calling for investments tomangrove eco-tourism area, Duyen Hai hot mineral spring, and Ba Dong beacheco-tourism site.

Furthermore, Cau Ke district, Tra Cu district and Duyen Hai town will be builtinto hubs for orchard tourism, sea tourism as well as festival and spiritualtourism.

Aware of huge potential of community-based tourism business, the province hasgiven financial support to local households to develop homestay services.Accordingly, households offering between two and five rooms are aided with 30million VND per room and have 50 percent of their lending interest subsidisedunder specific conditions.

Investment in restaurants with areas spanning 200 square metres and above toserve more than 100 guest at a time receives 500,000 VND per square metre insupport, and the maximum fund is 200 million VND for each restaurant.

Meanwhile, the purchase of transport vehicles able to carry more than 20passengers each will see 10 percent of costs financed, with maximum funding of50 million VND.

As for tourism investment projects, investors will receive 150 million VND foreach project to provide human resources training. In addition, as much as 14billion VND will be splashed out for tourism promotion programmes until 2020.

Earlier this month, the province launched the Con Chimcommunity-based tourism site in Chau Thanh district. A large dune on Co Chienriver, Con Chim has its natural and farming areas spanning 60 and 34 hectares,respectively. Since May this year, 20 tours to Con Chim have been sold on atrial basis, and they have received praise for service quality from travelagencies and tourists.

Last year, the province welcomed over 640,000 tourists; however, only half ofthem stayed overnight, with length of stay averaged at 1.5 days per person.

Thanks to local efforts, Tra Vinh attracted more than 765,400 visitors duringJanuary-September, up 66.46 percent from the same time last year. Tourismrevenue was estimated at 279.8 billion VND, or 107.24 billion VND higher thanthe amount gained in the nine-month period last year.

Sum said that Tra Vinh is striving to welcome around 1.4 million arrivals, andearn 372 billion VND from tourism services. The province will promote tourismlinkage with other localities in the Mekong Delta region and Ho Chi Minh Cityso as to turn tourism into an important economic sector of the locality./.