HA GIANG – From 23rd to 25th of November 2023, ST4SD Team Lead Kenneth Wood and Technical Assistant Le Thu Trang participated in a program entitled “Linking to develop tourism products of Ha Giang city and districts of Quang Binh, Bac Quang, and Vi Xuyen”. The attendance of the ST4SD representatives was made under the invitation of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Ha Giang province.
The program consisted of a four-day field trip to some tourism destinations, community-based villages, accommodation service providers, and restaurants of the city and districts and a workshop on the topic.
During the field trip, the ST4SD representatives visited several potential villages located across Quang Binh, Bac Quang and Vi Xuyen districts and Ha Giang city that the provincial department plans to further promote to reduce the overtourism in other districts. Moreover, the project members took part in the thematic exhibition “Colors of Dak Lak culture” in Ha Giang new museum on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of Vietnam Cultural Heritage Day.
On the last day, all the participants in the trip (including public sectors, private sectors, media agencies/ press, etc) joined a workshop on the same topic of the program, titled “Linking to develop tourism products of Ha Giang city, Quang Binh, Bac Quang and Vi Xuyen district”. The workshop gathered a plenty of reports on various aspects such as “Potential, strengths and development policy for tourism in Bac Quang district”, “Building the linking models to develop tourism in Southwest localities of Ha Giang”, “Agriculture Tourism”, “The feasibility and efficiency of linking products in developing the tourism products”, “Diversifying the experience activities in tourism product development in Ha Giang”, and so on.
On behalf of the ST4SD project team, Mr. Kenneth Wood gave a presentation to introduce the project and the tentative work plan with Ha Giang province in the upcoming years. On the sidelines of the workshop, Mr. Kenneth Wood discussed and agreed with Mr. Nguyen Hong Hai – Director of the Department – on the next trip (in December 2023) of the project in which two component managers will pay a working visit to discuss and agree on the details of the work plan.
The workshop received a lot of valuable feedback and comments from the participants. One of the participants appreciated the importance of this kind of workshop, where both the public and private sectors were together. This closely reflects one of objectives of the ST4SD project – “Strengthening the Public-private policy dialogue (PPD) at both national and subnational levels”. Furthermore, the other requested for a better training system for tourism-related stakeholders. Although it did not match with the Executive Hospitality Training outcome due to different target students, the ST4SD team saw the potential in supporting the locality in terms of the expert pool that the project expects to develop.
