Quang Ninh expands MICE tourism market

These service business units have built diverse programmes and products and proactively linked and expanded markets to attract this stream of visitors to Quang Ninh.

The international convention centre at FLC Ha Long Resort has a large space to hold year-end parties for units and businesses.

According to Pham Thi Mai Anh, Director of the Heritage Travel Centre, MICE tourism has a lot of potential, attracting a large number of visitors with high spending ability and long-term stays.

In the orientation of developing the MICE market in the next 1-3 years, Quang Ninh Heritage Travel Centre continues to focus on exploiting the potential factors of MICE tourism. The centre proposed that departments and branches of Quang Ninh Province increase promotion and search for markets, especially digital marketing to international markets.

To promote the exploitation of this customer stream, in addition to building diverse programmes and products, many units in the service supply chain proactively increase competitiveness by building attractive incentive policies specifically for the customer stream.

In recent years, Quang Ninh tourism has seen high growth in quality and quantity, making an important contribution to the province's development.

The international tourist market to Quang Ninh includes about 100 countries and territories, most notably Northeast Asia. In addition to the natural landscape, Quang Ninh also has the advantage of a spacious and synchronous infrastructure system with highways, seaports and international airports connecting with major tourist centres.

To date, the province has about 43,000 rooms, belonging to 2,200 accommodation establishments, including 15 5-star hotels, 500 tourist boats on Ha Long Bay and Bai Tu Long Bay and thousands of different road transport vehicles.

With these conditions, Quang Ninh is emerging as an ideal location to organize MICE tourism. Many high-level national and international conferences, seminars, cultural, sports and tourism events were successfully held in Ha Long.

Typical events include the Quang Ninh Investment Promotion Conference 2022, within the framework of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) event, the 17th General Assembly of the East Asia Inter-Regional Tourism Forum (EATOF) 2022 and SEA Games 31.

In the first ten months of 2023, Quang Ninh welcomed nearly 14 million visitors, an increase of 1.44 times over the same period in 2022. Of which, international visitors reached about 1.4 million, an increase of nearly eight times over the same period. Total tourism revenue reached 29,141 billion VND, an increase of 1.63 times over the same period in 2022. Of which, MICE tourism growth is from 25-50%. This is also the best recovery area for most major travel companies, accounting for about 60-70% of tourist numbers.

Nguyen Huyen Anh, Deputy Director of Quang Ninh Department of Tourism, said: Quang Ninh Tourism always accompanies, listens and learns about market tastes to build attractive policies and quality tourism products.

For MICE tourism, the province continues to improve human resources and professionalism in organising large events, learning from the experiences of some localities and countries with strengths in MICE tourism, and paying attention to promoting tourism to the southern provinces and several international partner markets.

Recently, Quang Ninh tourism has welcomed groups of Indian tourists to use accommodation services, visit Ha Long Bay and organise weddings and events. Realising the great potential of this market, Quang Ninh tourism is implementing many solutions to more effectively attract Indian tourists. In particular, International Yoga Day is the largest cultural and sports exchange event between the two countries, with the participation of Quang Ninh.

The province has organised International Yoga Day for three consecutive years.

In the coming time, Quang Ninh will continue to research and survey to find locations to organise International Yoga Day, to attract this special customer market, and at the same time, promote the promotion of cultural heritage and tourism.

However, according to experts, the province's tourism industry should not depend on available tourism resources but needs a "transformation" in policy and multi-sectoral connection and coordination to create attractive products and attract high-quality customers.

Key tourism services business units such as travel agencies and the tourism industry also need to innovate research and develop newer and more attractive MICE tourism lines to increase competitiveness with other destinations. At the same time, it is necessary to actively learn from experiences from other provinces to attract and welcome more tourists.