Developing Cultural Resources and Cultural Tourism in Vietnam

Vietnam is a country with a long history of development and has great potential and advantages for developing cultural tourism with many recognized cultural relics and heritages. Among more than 40000 relics in Vietnam, there are more than 10000 provincial relics, more than 3621 national relics, 130 special national relics; along with 15 intangible cultural heritages recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This study analyzes the practice of cultural tourism and factors affecting cultural tourism in Vietnam, including human resources and cultural products. The author builds a theoretical research model and surveys the opinions of 350 managers of 180 tourism and cultural agencies and organizations in a number of localities, including Hanoi (North), Hue (Central) and Ho Chi Minh City (South). The research results show that Vietnam has advantages in human resources which are factors promoting the development of cultural tourism; however, cultural products are not diverse and do not have breakthroughs to promote the development of cultural tourism, from which the author discusses policy issues for reference and application to many localities of Vietnam in the current context.