Vietnam to review its plethora of cookie-cutter festivals
17:36 04/03/2009

  Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Tran Chien Thang   Vietnam will review the country’s dumbfounding array of faceless festivals to breathe life into the copious and unoriginal events, a deputy cultural minister said.

Over the past few months, travel firms have repeatedly complained about poorly planned and overlapping festivals, slamming authorities’ failure to furnish tour operators with necessary information.

 

They aired grievances that back-to-back festivals are often organized under the same theme in neighboring provinces and that organizers have left tour operators in the lurch to dream up attractive advertising for uncreative and last minute events.

Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Tran Chien Thang told Thanh Nien Monday that the Party’s Politburo had instructed the ministry to review and revamp Vietnam’s profusion of festivals.

The review would be conducted late this year, Thang added.

He also admitted that it was inevitable that Vietnam would be swamped with a glut of insipid festivals as the same directors are hired to orchestrate the events time and time again.

But he also argued that each province had its own reason to held festivals and wanted to woo more tourists.

Several tourism agencies said that the quality of these festivals suffers immensely in proportion to their quantity. Tour operators feel that most festivals even fail to highlight the interesting characteristics of their locations.

Within last June alone, there were four major festivals in the central region.

The coastal cities of Nha Trang and Da Nang organized a Beach Festival and a Sea Festival respectively on back to back weeks.

Additionally, while the central city of Hue  hosted a Traditional Craft Festival in early June, its neighboring Quang Nam province queued up to organized another four-day Heritage Festival later that month.

Reported by Bui Ngoc Long – Translated by An Dien

Source : thanhniennews.com