Hoi An town in the central province ofQuang Nam is building a 2 billion VND tourism promotion plan betweennow and 2010.

The plan will focus on threestrategic spearheads, including the World Cultural Heritage of Hoi AnAncient Town, the Cham Islands World Biosphere Reserve and sea-basedtourism.

According to the Quang Nam provincial Department of Culture, Sports andTourism, traditional tours such as “One day being a resident in theAncient Town” and “One day being a resident in the Cham Islands WorldBiosphere Reserve” together with two new products--“Night Market” andthe “Tourism and Environment Festival”--will be promoted in theprogramme.

Information on Hoi An will be posted on tourism websites, in aviationpublications, tourist guide books and books on Hoi An.

About 30km from the central city of Da Nang, the small town of Hoi Annot only contains diversified architecture of different cultures butalso preserves a huge treasure of intangible cultural values. The HoiAn Ancient Town, which was recognised by the UN Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a world cultural heritage site in1999, has become an attractive destination for tourists.

In the first nine months of this year, Hoi An town welcomed 812,000tourists, including 396,000 foreign arrivals. Especially, after theCham Islands was recognised as a world biosphere reserve, the number ofvisitors to the town increased by over 80 percent compared to the sameperiod last year.

Hoi An was also selected as one of the top ten destinations in Asiabased on an online vote conducted by the tourism magazine Smart TravelAsia./.