In the past two years, the Department of Tourism planned to make Food Tours into a culinary tourism product in the overall program that is Hai Phong city tour. Before that, we also cooperated with Vietnam Railways, specifically Hai Phong railway station to open a train line from Hanoi to Hai Phong. In addition, travel agencies, shops, and restaurants in the city also coordinate with the Hai Phong Department of Tourism to develop experience activities. However, because of the pandemic, we were not able to implement this program on a large scale.
In this current situation, where tourism activities are slowly recovering, we took the initiative and immediately released a guide map for delicacies around Hai Phong, which had received some very positive feedback. The railway sector in Hai Phong never had such a large number of passengers ever before, during the last holiday from April 30 to May 3, Hai Phong Station recorded more than 15,000 passengers traveling by railway. In recent days, especially during the weekends, almost every train had to add more cars, some trains were so overloaded that there are no more seats, so some passengers had to use plastic chairs. From April until now, the monthly growth in the number of visitors traveling to Hai Phong is always above 10%. Of which, 80% of those tourists came for the food tour program. On the Haiphongtrip Facebook page, we also see that a lot of our locals are happy to welcome more tourists, as it makes the city more vibrant and robust. Every time locals come to their favorite restaurants or food stalls, there’s always a line every time, which makes everyone very happy.