The administration of Thanh Hoa Province, located in north-central Vietnam, is seeking to upgrade its Tho Xuan airport into an international one to be able to serve international visitors, especially those from South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, said a local official on Friday afternoon.

Nguyen Van Thi, vice-chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, made the statement at a conference held on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City to promote tourism cooperation between Thanh Hoa and the city plus other southeastern provinces.

The airport upgrade is one of the measures that this north-central locality wants to adopt in the next few years to attract more foreign tourists, Thi said.

Thanh Hoa has remained among the top Vietnamese localities by the number of visitors over the past few years.

The province welcomed more than 11 million tourists and booked over VND20 trillion (US$834.8 million) in tourism revenue last year.

In the first seven months of 2023, it served 10.2 million tourist arrivals and earned more than VND19.6 trillion ($817.4 million) in tourism turnover.

However, up to 80 percent of its visitors came from northern Vietnamese localities and neighboring areas, with the rest from the southern region.

Given the big gap between the number of northern visitors and those from the south, the province has yet to fulfill its tourism potential, especially in the field of air travel.

Local carriers launched many air services linking Thanh Hoa with Ho Chi Minh City and other southeastern provinces but found it hard to maintain operations on the routes due to low demand, the official elaborated.

The Tho Xuan airport operates some 25 daily flights to and from Ho Chi Minh City, according to the vice-chairman.

Thanh Hoa was said to boast enormous tourism potential in the mountainous, coastal, and delta regions, in addition to many cultural heritage sites, relics, and natural landscapes such as Ben En National Park, Pu Luong Nature Reserve, and Con Moong Cave.

Moreover, it is home to more than 300 cultural and culinary festivals.

Speaking at the event, Duong Anh Duc, vice-chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, said that high connectivity is one of the characteristics of the tourism industry.

A tourism boom will accelerate travel and the circulation of goods among localities nationwide, Duc explained.

As a tourism hub in the country, the southern metropolis has established tourism connections with five regions and 49 provinces and cities.

Duc affirmed that Ho Chi Minh City will create optimal conditions for other provinces and cities to promote their tourism in the city.

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