The second Ho Chi Minh City River Festival 2024 is expected to turn the southern metropolis into a popular destination for waterway tourism. A signature show called ‘the Story of a River’, the highlight of the festival, told the story of historic boats associated with the locality. Meanwhile, Da Nang has undertaken landscape planning on both sides of Han river, to improve local tourism development. In 2024, the two banks of the Han River will be the venues for 55 periodic and annual cultural events and festivals organised by agencies, units and localities. Its neighbouring city of Hue is also organising river tours by yacht. Tourists will have a chance to enjoy the scenery on both sides of the Huong (Parfum) River. In the northern region, Phu Tho province has cooperated with Yen Bai and Lao Cai provinces to build tourism products along the Red River connecting cultural values between the three provinces to serve tourists with many attractive tourism programmes. Attracting international tourists to relic sites and cultural heritages also brings income to local people, and contributes to creating motivation for people to maintain and develop traditional crafts, and promote the value of cultural heritages./.