Hue Festival is a bi-annual event in Thua Thien-Hue Province celebrating its founding in 2000 and its overall long and colourful 710-year old history. It is a grand celebration showcasing Vietnam’s finest cultural, artistic and even athletic elements. This year, it will take place from April 29-May 4, 2016, expecting a huge number of visitors from all over the world.

Although it is a display of traditions, Hue Festival is actually a present-day celebration patterned after festivals from certain cities from all over the world. Since it started 16 years ago, it took eight events before it gained both national and international acknowledgement. It is a huge part a tourism strategy in order to promote the province and Vietnam as a whole to the rest of the globe and it has been greatly successful so far as evidenced by the large number of tourists entering the country during this time.

This year’s festivities have united artists from 20 countries, including the Guangdong Theatre from China, the Cancer band from Denmark, Michal Milczareck Trio from Poland, Della Mae from the U.S., Hallelujah from Israel, Germein Sisters from Australia and Yun Myung-hwa from South Korea. France is the main partner in this year’s Hue Festival but domestic art groups will also be performing such as the Cleopatra belly dance group from Ha Noi, Giao Thoi band from HCM City and Viet Nam Circus Federation.  

In 2014, 200,000 tourists arrived in Thua Thien-Hue Province to attend the Hue Festival. In just the first half of 2015, it jumped to an incredible 1.6 million. This year 2016, even more visitors are expected to join the celebration, so there is a concern that accommodations in the province may not be enough to meet the needs of all its guests. Travel agencies, hotels and other tourism-related businesses are therefore driven to increase their accommodations and most especially improve their products and services in order to satisfy the demands of the increasing number of visitors.

While Hue Festival itself draws a lot of people from all over the world to visit Vietnam, the country’s famous tourist destinations are also always available to bring awe and amazement to anyone like the Lang Co Beach, A Luoi mountainous region and Tam Giang Lagoon, just to name a few. This year’s Hue Festival is expected to boost Vietnam’s tourism sector, promoting its rich culture and history to the rest of the world.