HCM City festival to help spread love for Ao Dai

HCM City, March 5 (VNA) – The 10th Ho Chi Minh City Ao Dai (long dress) Festival, slated for March 7-17, is expected to contribute to preserving and promoting traditional culture to international friends.

The festival is part of the project on the organisation of typical festivals and cultural and sports events in HCM City for the 2020-2030 period.

It will include a variety of unique activities such as an art programme themed “Ao Dai – Colours of Ho Chi Minh City”, an Ao Dai exhibition and interaction space, and an online Ao Dai competition.

This year’s event will feature more than 20 key opinion leaders in various fields, beauty queens, singers, artists, and travel bloggers as image ambassadors. Along with that, it will see the participation of 30 famous Ao Dai designers from many localities across the country.

Le Truong Hien Hoa, Deputy Director of the municipal Tourism Department, said the festival will be not only a unique cultural tourism product of the locality, but also a driving force for socioeconomic development.

On this occasion, the city will honour artisans, ambassadors, designers, and tailors who have greatly contributed to the festival during its 10-year journey.
First launched in 2014, the festival has seen breakthroughs in both scale and quality, helping spread the love for Ao Dai among both visitors and locals, particularly civil servants, public employees, and female workers.

Developing unique tourism - cultural products, promoting traditional values to locals and international friends, and attracting more tourists to HCM City are among the priorities of local authorities this year.

Hoa said over the past years, HCM City’s position in the global tourism map has advanced, and the southern metropolis is known as an attractive, friendly, and safe destination for tourists.

Last year, the city attracted nearly 5 million foreign visitors and over 35 million domestic tourists. Its tourism reached nearly 160 trillion VND (7.8 billion USD).
In 2023, it was honoured as “Asia’s Leading Business Travel Destination” and “Asia’s Leading Festival and Event Destination”, and was on the list of the world’s Top 100 City Destinations Index 2023.

Hoa said that the city set a target of attracting about 6 million foreign visitors and 38 million domestic tourists this year, with 190 trillion VND (7.6 billion USD) in revenue.-VNA