Hue to offer free admission to visitors on National Day

The central province of Thua Thien – Hue will offer free admission to the Complex of Hue Monuments, an UNESCO heritage site in Hue City, for Vietnamese visitors on National Day (September 2).

Illustrative image.
Illustrative image.

During the National Day holiday from September 1 – 3, the province will host the 2018 Hue Half Marathon, a traditional boat race festival on the Huong River and a festival of “thanh tra”, a specialty pomelo of Hue, to draw visitors.

Travel agencies have designed sightseeing tours to take visitors around the famous temples of Hue and go on boat rides on the Perfume River in the evening when tourists can enjoy live Hue folklore song performances and drop floating lanterns on the river.

The province expects to welcome a 15 percent increase in travellers during the holiday, said Deputy Director of the provincial Department of Tourism Nguyen Van Phuc. The department has intensified inspections of local lodging providers and their fire safety standards. The lodging providers are required to publicly list their room rates to avoid unreasonable price hikes.

Thua Thien-Hue province is home to five UNESCO heritages, the Complex of Hue Monuments (World Heritage Site), Nha nhac – Vietnamese court music (part of the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity), the woodblocks of the Nguyen Dynasty (part of the Memory of the World Programme), the imperial archives of the Nguyen Dynasty (part of the Memory of the World Programme), and the Royal Literature on Hue Royal Architecture (part of Documentary Heritage in the Memory of the World Programme in the Asia-Pacific region).

The province is also famous for Bach Ma National Park, the garden houses of Hue, Tam Giang Lagoon, Lang Co Bay and its many beautiful beaches.

It received approximately 3.3 million tourists in the first half of 2018. The figure included more than 1.3 million foreigners, up 35 percent from the same period last year.

The province aims to lure 4 – 4.2 million visitors this year, up 10 – 12 percent, with about 40 – 45 percent being foreigners. It hopes to record a 15 percent increase in tourism revenue to VND 4.2 – 4.3 trillion (US$ 184.1 – 188.5 million).