World Heritage Road Expands into Vietnam's Highlands

The World Heritage Road, Central Vietnam's community-based tourism development which seeks to unite the provinces of Central Vietnam and three UNESCO World Heritage sites to drive international tourism to Central Vietnam, is to be expanded into Vietnam's highlands.

This was decided at the first Annual General Meeting attended by the tourism leaders of the various provinces of Central Vietnam and the highlands, which took place at the Furama Resort Danang in June. 

The expansion into Vietnam's highlands to support the tourism development in the region was one of the areas of focus decided for The World Heritage Road in the coming year. Another was the finalization of the Quality Tourism Standards scheme for tourism facilities and services. These Quality Tourism Standards will be used to determine the level of WHR membership for participating businesses, which will be ranked from between a 1 to 5 lotus flower categorization. The categorization will apply to hotels, restaurants, shops, travel agents, and transport companies, where 5 lotus flowers represents the highest quality standards.

"This system is designed to act as a catalyst for raising tourism service standards in Vietnam, thus drawing more international visitors," said Paul Stoll, Secretary General of the World Heritage Road.

At the meeting, the previous year's activities were also reviewed and included trade mark protection, legal status proceedings, the set up of a website, membership and partnership recruitment as well as its terms and conditions, and of course the promotional activities including printing of brochures, flyers, posters, media & trade familiarizations, attending domestic and international trade fairs and filming of documentaries of the WHR by various TV stations.

The meeting also noted that the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism decided to make use of the World Heritage Road as a promotion theme for Central Vietnam in 2004. The promotion campaign includes cultural, sport and other tourism activities in all WHR member provinces, which will be promoted via media, domestic and international trade shows in cooperation with VNAT around the world. One of the highlights will be the first World Congress of Theme Roads which will be organized in Danang in September 2004.

A topic of the meeting was how the WHR can contribute to the tourist recovery after SARS and a nine-point proposal was agreed and forwarded to VNAT for consideration.

The meeting also revealed the interest of the tourism leaders to establish a tourism center in every province and connect these by bus, car, motorbike and other transport. Committed partners for this WHR project are the ACB Bank of Vietnam, the Mai Linh Corporation, and others.

The WHR is lobbying for a general improvement of the tourism infrastructure of Vietnam and for the set up of new airports in Quang Nam - the Chu Lai Airport and Cam Ranh Airport in Central South Vietnam, near the beach town of Nha Trang.

Paul Stoll the Secretary General of the WHR says: "The annual meeting was successful and showed an increasing commitment of WHR members and partners to create a unified destination Central Vietnam. This commitment is mirrored by VNAT which has decided to use the World Heritage Road theme for the National Promotion Campaign 2004."

Paul Stoll said he believes that the tourism of Central Vietnam will gain an additional 10% in number of tourist arrivals per year because of the WHR efforts, which was agreed by Dr. Ho Cong Dung in a scientific study assigned by VNAT to measure the impact of the WHR on the tourism development of Central Vietnam.