The ancient capital city of Hue has been warned that it may not have a sustainable tourism development if it continues wasting Hue’s nature and characteristics.
It’s obvious that Hue has become a famous tourism destination. Visitors to Hue can try food specialties, enjoy the Huong romantic river’s landscapes and have meals in kingly manner. Especially, they can wear kings’ clothes or take pictures with the “kings.”
However, experts have warned that the king-style services have been overexploited, which would make the Vietnamese kings’ images turn trivial in the eyes of visitors.
Kings getting commonplace
It seems that no country with Oriental traditional culture has exploited the kings’ lifestyle to design tourism products.
Meanwhile, the kings’ lifestyle in the Nguyen dynasties has been abused by the travel firms in Hue City to attract tourists. Thrones, imperial mantle, royal meals and imperial boat have all been used as the methods to lure travelers.
Tourists just need to spend 45,000 dong to become a king to sit on a throne. In the last 2012 Hue Festival, some travelers even took pictures in the imperial mantle in a ridiculous manner outside the Royal Palace. Especially, a European woman had her photo taken while she was sitting on the king’s thigh in pants.
As a result, the image of the Vietnamese kings has become trivial in the eyes of foreign travelers.
Travelers would only have to spend certain sums of money to be served with imperial meals with the dishes in the Nguyen dynasties. The images of western men and women in imperial mantles trying “the kings’ dishes” have distorted the westerners’ knowledge and understanding about Vietnamese kings.
Meanwhile, the thing Hue should do is to maintain its imposing characteristics of a capital city and protect the images of the sacred imperial city in the eyes of Vietnamese and foreign people, even though it is no more the center of feudal dynasties.
Overcharging spoils Hue’s tourism
The visitors to Hue would have the opportunities to travel on boat on the Huong River and listen to Hue’s traditional lyrics. However, the tickets to the traditional lyrics performances sold at many hotels in Hue are “illegal tickets,” not the tickets issued by the competent agencies.
The hotels in the city cooperate with transport firms to look for clients. The owners of the boats who serve the travelers’ trip on the Huong River and organize artistic shows earn 40,000 dong from every traveler, while the hotels get the other 40,000 dong.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Tan Thuong, Director of the Center for Hue Lyrics Performance has affirmed that since 2006, the center has been the only unit allowed to sell tickets to Hue traditional lyrics shows.
It is the pagodas, palaces and the “Hue’s characteristics” which has beautified the city, attracted tourists and built up a tourism brand to Hue. However, the city has been wasting the Hue’s characteristics. If the characteristics disappear one day, Hue wouldn’t be the attractive destination in the eyes of tourists any more.
What does “Hue’s characteristics” mean? The question proves to be very difficult even for Dr Thai Kim Lan. However, in people’s thoughts, Hue’s characteristics mean the specific manners that only exist in Hue.
At present, tourism is a key economic branch of Thua Hien-Hue province, which makes up 45% of the locality’s GDP, the proportion higher than that of any other cities and provinces in Vietnam.
According to Phan Tien Dung, Director of the provincial Department for Culture, Sports and Tourism, the proportion would be raised to 50% by 2015.
(Source: To Quoc)
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