Building Do Son and Cat Ba into an international tourist center: “Accelerating” high-class infrastructure projects

  • Resolution no. 45 of the Politburo on construction and development of Hai Phong city to 2030, with vision to 2045, aimed that by 2025, Cat Ba tourist resort, Do Son district with Ha Long (Quang Ninh province) must be built into becoming an international tourism center. To accomplish this goal, one of the tasks and solutions is to accelerate the progress of international-class resort and entertainment projects being implemented by the city.

Sun Group is urgently building a 21 km long cable car system across the sea connecting Cat Hai Island with tourist destinations on Cat Ba Island. In the photo: The contractor concentrating machinery to build cable pylons. Photo: Trung Kien

The bottleneckof infrastructure and high quality services

In 2018, Cat Ba welcomed more than 2.5 million tourists, of which, there were more than 608 thousand international visitors (an increase of 30% compared to 2017). In the first 3 months of 2019, Cat Ba welcomed over 210,000 international visitors (up 30% over the same period in 2018). However, Vice Chairman of Cat Hai District People’s Committee – Hoang Trung Cuong assessed that Cat Ba currently only attracts budget international tourists with limited spending. The main reason is that Cat Ba still has no world-class amusement parks and resorts. Cat Ba currently has neither a 5-star hotel, nor an amusement park sufficient to attract tourists, especially international visitors.

Even more depressing, for many years, Do Son has almost no international tourists. Do Son District People’s Committee Chairman – Hoang Xuan Minh acknowledged that Do Son tourism is falling behind compared to the current tourism trend of international visitors. Do Son’s accommodation and entertainment facilities are even worse than Cat Ba’s.

According to Vice Chairman of the City’s Tourism Association – Hoang Tuan Anh, an important criterion of an international tourism center is to attract a large number of foreign tourists to visit and relax. Meanwhile, with a more advanced tourism infrastructure, Ha Long is accelerating in terms of attracting international tourists. In 2018, the total number of international tourists coming to Cat Ba and Do Son was only half that of Ha Long.

Restrictions on tourism infrastructure have been pointed out by the city leaders for a long time with directions to overcome them. In recent years, the city has invited and created the maximum and most favorable conditions for corporations and businesses to invest in high-class tourism projects in these 2 localities. But so far, no general entertainment project has been completed and put into use yet. Nearly 20 major tourism infrastructure development projects in Do Son have been approved for many years but have not yet been formed, a typical one is the 5-star hotel project of Nam Cuong Group (expected to welcome customers by the end of 2012, but the raw part has not been built yet). In Cat Ba, nearly half of the more than 20 projects for which land was allocated or leased by the city to invest in tourism infrastructure have not been implemented or implemented very slowly. For example, the Cat Ba Amatina Project with a total investment of up to USD 1 billion of Vinaconex ITC was expected to be put into use in 2015, so far, the land is still deserted.

The main reason for the slow implementation of the project is the investor’s lack of capital. Through inspection and examination, many projects were asked to terminate implementation and subjected to land reclamation. However, many organizations and businesses which cannot afford to continue implementing the project still linger and cope to keep the land.

Bright spots from large corporations

In that context, the bright spots of tourism infrastructure development in Cat Ba and Do Son now are the projects of large Corporations being rapidly deployed. A typical one is the Construction project of a high-class eco-tourism and entertainment complex in Cat Ba of Sun Group with a total value of VND 6 trillion, including 40 items such as: Sea cable car from Cat Hai to Cat Ba, Resort – health care tourism complex, 18-hole Cat Ba golf course… Currently, two cable pylons are being constructed urgently and expected to be completed in 2019. At the meeting of the city leaders with FLC Group at the end of March, agreements were reached to accelerate the implementation of 6 major projects, including the Do Son complex of services, tourism, resorts and high-class ecological villas with a total investment of more than VND 5.3 trillion.

In order to accelerate the construction of tourism infrastructure, in the coming time, the City People’s Committee will assign the Department of Planning and Investment to review and supplement policies to encourage, incentivize and support investment at key tourism destinations of Do Son and Cat Ba to continue attract strategic investors to invest in large-scale projects in the field of tourism services. The Department of Natural Resources and Environment will be assigned by the City People’s Committee to coordinate with localities to continue checking, reviewing and identifying businesses which are slow in project implementation, violate the laws on land management and use. This shows the city’s determination to deal with businesses that “idles away” project land over the years. Thereby, creating a strong breakthrough in tourism infrastructure for 2 key tourist sites of the city, successfully implementing the objectives set out in Resolution 45./.