Diversifying the experiences available to visitors is the cornerstone ofa major new plan to revitalise the tourism industry in the northernprovince of Quang Ninh in 2014.

The provinceboasts great potential for the industry thanks to its abundance ofbeauty sports including world famous Ha Long Bay, Yen Tu Buddhismcomplex, Bai Tu Long Bay and the Mong Cai international border gate.However, this potential is still mostly untapped.

Secretary of the provincial Party Committee Pham Minh Chinh has askedthe local authority to continue raising the quality of human resourceswhile rethinking the experiences currently on offer to tourists andfinding ways of making them both more exciting and lucrative.

Last year, the province spent more than 900 million VND (42.3 millionUSD) on building a museum-library complex, which was inaugurated inOctober and awarded the prize “Building of the Year” by the VietnamUrban Planning and Development Association.

Since it was inaugurated, the complex has welcomed nearly 30,000 visitors, many of them from foreign countries.

Meanwhile, since last August, Quang Ninh has held folk musicperformances everyday to entertain tourists in the province.

Recently, the province conducted a pilot programme in which itinvited domestic and foreign travel agencies and journalists to joinfact-finding tours, with the aim of encouraging them to spread the wordto other countries worldwide.

Hotels are alsogetting in on the act, organising attractive new events to teach foreignvisitors how to cook Vietnam’s traditional dishes and introducing themto the country’s famous tea and coffee.

Theprovince served 7.5 million holidaymakers in 2013, a year-on-year riseof 7 percent, and earned 5 trillion VND (235 million USD) fromtourism.-VNA