This is an opportunity for provinces and cities to create more attractive flower-based tourism products. However, sustainable solutions need to be implemented.
In March, in the border communes of Quan Ba District (Ha Giang Province), late-blooming peach blossoms still show off their brilliant pink colour; Pear blossoms dye the roads, valleys, and villages nestled among the rocky mountains white.
Attraction from the flower seasons
In the warm spring of March, Ha Giang organises two flower festivals at the same time: the peach blossom festival with the theme “Sparkling peach blossoms - Spring returns to the border” at the late-blooming peach garden in Cao Ma Po Commune (Quan Ba District); and the pear blossom festival with the theme “Spring on the border festival” in Pho Bang Town (Dong Van District). Currently, the organising committee is actively preparing conditions to welcome domestic and international guests to come and enjoy the spring and flowers.
From Hanoi to Ha Giang to visit the rocky plateau and excited to see the pure white pear flowers blooming from the rough branches, Nguyen Thu Hoa said: “Knowing that Ha Giang is famous for buckwheat flowers, we are usually hesitant to travel to Ha Giang at the beginning of the year because we are afraid of the wet weather. But when we heard that the rocky plateau also has beautiful pear flowers, we tried a new schedule. I’ve found that traveling to Ha Giang in this season is also very interesting — the flowers cover the mountainsides and valleys.”
Although plum blossoms are at the end of the season, tourists still flock to see the flowers on Moc Chau Plateau (Son La), especially on weekends. In February, many times, hotels and homestays in Moc Chau are overloaded. With more than 3,000 hectares of plums, Moc Chau is probably one of the areas with the most plum blossoms in our country.
After a cold winter, when spring comes, the plum gardens bloom white on the mountains and forests, creating a fairy-tale scene. The Na Ka plum valley, located near Moc Chau Town, is a place that many tourists visit. In early spring mornings, the misty sky and earth add to the majesty of the scenery. In addition to some main locations, plum blossoms also appear all over the roads, creating impressive vistas.
According to many people, 2025 is the year when plum blossoms bloom most beautifully in recent years. While plum blossoms are at the end of the season, Son La begins to welcome a new specialty: Ban (Bauhinia) flower season. Ban flowers begin to bloom white on the mountain slopes, which is also the time when many festivals take place. The most prominent is the Son La City Ban Flower Festival.
Here, in addition to admiring the Ban flowers, tourists can also experience many cultural beauties of ethnic minorities as well as enjoy performances in the “Miss Ban Flowers” contest, exchange activities, ethnic sports competitions, ethnic cuisine competitions, enjoy mountain and forest products, and more.
Tran Cong Chinh, Vice Chairman of the People’s Committee of Son La City, said: “Up to this point, we have assigned specific tasks to units, communes and wards to prepare for activities to welcome domestic and foreign tourists. This is not only an opportunity to introduce the beauty of Ban flowers, but also an opportunity to promote the unique cultural features, culinary values, natural landscapes, etc., of the city, as well as Son La province in general.”
When talking about flower season tourism, it is impossible not to mention Hanoi. The difference is that Hanoi's flower seasons are planted and cared for by human hands, so they have their own beauty. In March, white Su flowers bloom on many streets and trumpet flowers — the flower of April — have dyed gardens or street vendors white.
Although Ban flowers have not settled in Hanoi for long, they have become a specialty that attracts tourists. Of course, when talking about Hanoi, we cannot help but mention the milk flower season, the daisy season, the immense lotus ponds or the immense pink peach gardens.
Director of Hanoi Department of Tourism Dang Huong Giang said: “Hanoi has the advantage of many flower species, many flower growing areas, and many flower streets, creating beautiful scenery, attracting tourists both in the inner city and the suburbs. Currently, many localities, such as Me Linh District, Ba Vi District, and Tay Ho District, have exploited and developed tourism according to the flower season with good results. In the coming time, the tourism industry will continue to coordinate with agencies and units to exploit tourism according to the flower seasons in conjunction with other tourism activities and products to create higher efficiency.”
Cooperation of many sectors is needed
Only about 10 years ago, tourism according to flower seasons was quite strange, but with the development of media and social networks, localities with typical flowers were “on air” very quickly. Tourism according to flower seasons has developed strongly since then.
A typical example is Ha Giang. Buckwheat is a food crop, but when many young people visited Ha Giang and posted pictures of buckwheat flowers on the rocky plateau on social networks, it created a strong trend of tourism in the buckwheat flower season.
Ha Giang Province quickly seized the opportunity by planning flower growing areas, supporting people with flower varieties, and organising festivals. Since 2015, each year the province has provided seeds for people to grow buckwheat flowers across a total area of about 400 hectares.
The flower growing area is planned in beautiful locations such as: Heaven's Gate stopover and the Thach Son Than rock block (Quan Ba District); the route to the communes of Pho Cao, Sung La, and Lung Cu (Dong Van District); and the Mong ethnic community cultural tourism village in Pa Vi Ha Hamlet, Pa Vi Commune (Meo Vac).
In addition to buckwheat flowers, Ha Giang Province also expands its increasingly rich flower tourism products with cherry blossoms, peach blossoms, apricot blossoms, and plum blossoms in spring; azaleas on the top of Tay Con Linh Mountain (Vi Xuyen District); and hibiscus flowers (Meo Vac District).
Flower tourism is a tradition of Hanoi with many flower-growing areas, flower villages, and flower streets. To promote tourism associated with flower viewing, aiming to provide professional tourism products, Hanoi has planned flower growing areas, planted typical flowers for the streets, trained farmers to grow flowers for tourism, organised events to promote the beauty of flowers.
Many activities have become annual celebrations, such as: Me Linh Flower Festival, West Lake Lotus Festival, Peach Blossom Festival, and Kumquat Festival in Nhat Tan, Tu Lien. Particularly for the lotus, Hanoi is making efforts to restore and expand the lotus growing area — with a rare lotus species of West Lake in the West Lake area and surrounding areas — while at the same time developing dozens of products from lotus, the most prominent of which are lotus tea and lotus silk.
Hanoi plans to increase the lotus growing area from the current 600 hectares to 900 hectares in the near future, with a close combination of exploiting agricultural products with tourism activities. Currently, flower gardens in Me Linh, wild sunflower hills in Ba Vi, lotus ponds in My Duc or peach gardens in Nhat Tan, West Lake Flower Valley, and Red River Rock Beach (all in Tay Ho District) have all been exploited through specialised flower tours. Hanoi tourism industry continues to coordinate with units and localities to build the tourism brand “Hanoi 12 flower seasons”, with each month being a typical flower.
Meanwhile, Deputy Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Son La, Tran Xuan Viet, shared: “Ecotourism associated with experiencing flowers or organising festivals associated with flowers is contributing to diversifying tourism products and enhancing the tourism brand of Son La. We continue to invest, upgrade and develop services associated with flowers suitable for natural and cultural conditions in tourist areas and spots to create more typical local tourism products.”
The fact that localities are interested in planting and planning flowers for tourism is a positive signal for “flower tourism”. However, there is still much to do to make seasonal flower tourism a tourism sector and maximise its potential. In the world, cherry blossom tourism in Japan is always a fever, while yellow leaf tourism in the Republic of Korea also attracts tourists, this is an experience that Vietnam needs to learn from.
Phung Quang Thang, Vice President of the Vietnam Tourism Association, said that many countries have turned the flower and leaf seasons into strong tourism brands, attracting a large number of tourists. These countries all have strategies to plant trees by region and provide services for visitors to experience, view, and take photos with flowers in a professional manner.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese flower tourism is still seasonal and needs to overcome this weakness. According to Pham Hai Quynh, Director of the Asian Tourism Development Institute, when developing tourism according to flower seasons, localities need to pay attention to ensuring that exploitation and development do not negatively affect the environment and landscape. They also need to develop more tours to experience local culture to develop tourism according to flower seasons in a sustainable manner.
