Hoa Lo Prison Relic Management Board is focusing on perfecting new sightseeing products. Illustrative photo.
Currently, Hanoi has 5,922 cultural and historical relics, of which there are over 1,182 relics ranked at the national level, accounting for nearly 20% of the whole country. Many famous monuments such as Thang Long Imperial Citadel, Co Loa relic, Temple of Literature, Hanoi Old Quarter, Ngoc Son Temple, Hoa Lo Prison relic, etc. are destinations not to be missed by tourists when visiting Hanoi.
The fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Hanoi has shown signs of being controlled. Therefore, the Hanoi People’s Committee has allowed the resumption of some types of services. If the pandemic situation continues to be well controlled, tourist attractions and monuments can be reopened to welcome visitors soon.
Therefore, during the implementation of compulsory closing of the monuments for the Covid-19 pandemic prevention, the management boards of the relics of cultural establishments have taken advantage of professional training, continued to explore and create new ideas to enrich their activities after welcoming guests back. In fact, to attract more tourists and bring them back, monuments must innovate and create attractiveness for tourism products.
From 2020 to now, although the reception of visitors has been interrupted continuously due to the pandemic, this is a period of breakthroughs in the construction of new tourism products by the Hoa Lo Prison Relic Management Board. In addition to the two-night tourism products namely “ Sacred Night – Shining Vietnamese spirit” and “Sacred Night 2 – Live like flowers” that have attracted many delegations to register for the experience, the Management Board of Hoa Lo Prison relic is focusing on perfecting a new sightseeing product, with the theme “Sacred Night 3 – Youth fire”. This continues to be a product of night tourism organized at the relic. All tours are based on historical stories about prisoners who are patriots and revolutionary soldiers imprisoned at Hoa Lo Prison under the French colonial regime. The products are a combination of sightseeing, guiding, screening documentary films and staging scenes to create attraction.
According to the Head of the Hoa Lo Prison Relic Management Board, Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, currently, officials and employees of the Relic Management Board are rushing to perfect and practice to bring the most attractive products for tourists as soon as it is allowed to reopen. In addition, Hoa Lo Prison relic is also focusing on implementing the exhibition “Lighting the fire of love” towards the 74th anniversary of Invalids and Martyrs’ Day on July 27.
Meanwhile, the Center for Cultural and Scientific Activities of Temple of Literature is promoting the plan to recreate the Temple of Literature in the Thai Hoc House to help visitors visualize a part of the examinations of the ancient court. The center is also developing a plan to develop smart tourism on the technology platform, including digitizing all items of monuments by 3D technology, developing services and utilities using technology, building experiences using technology. In this plan, the Temple of Literature relic will have a night tourism product to travel to experience the heritage by light technology combined with 3D technology. At the same time, the Center for Cultural and Scientific Activities of the Temple of Literature is also developing many plans and projects to attract tourists when it is reopened.
For the Thang Long Imperial Citadel heritage, in the temporary closing to prevent and control the Covid-19 pandemic, Thang Long Heritage Conservation Center – Hanoi has “refined” the night tour product of “Decoding the Thang Long Imperial Citadel” based on listening to the comments by the tour operators and tourists after certain “trial runs”. Because this is a new product, combining introduction, laser light show, discovering the “secrets” of Thang Long Imperial Citadel with art performance, etc. This will help the product to be more complete when it re-opens to welcome guests.
At the Hanoi Museum, the completion of the display contents is still taking place with great urgency with working and implementing pandemic prevention measures. The exchange and work with foreign experts are still regularly carried out to ensure the construction progress when the experts cannot come to Vietnam due to the pandemic. Officials and staff of the Hanoi Museum are focusing on the design and construction of the sample display area, with the theme “Hanoi Nature”. After completion, visitors can learn about Hanoi’s nature as well as many other issues with attractive means, images and documents.
In addition, temporarily stopping to welcome guests is also an opportunity for many relics to train for improving the quality of human resources, especially the explanation, serving visitors, renewing the application of information technology, etc. to serve tourists better.
Hoang Nam