At the opening ceremony, Vice State President Vo Thi Anh Xuan emphasised that this regional-level event features diverse, vibrant, and attractive cultural and tourism activities. The festival serves as a highlight to further strengthen tourism connectivity, contributing to the promotion of natural beauty, ethnic cultural values, and national pride while offering visitors new experiences and discoveries.

The Vice President called on Party organisations, local authorities, enterprises, and ethnic communities across the expanded Northwest region and Ho Chi Minh City to focus on developing tourism under the motto: unique products – professional services – convenient and simple procedures – competitive prices – clean and beautiful environment – safe, civilised, and friendly destinations. She stressed the importance of a shared approach to tourism cooperation and linkages, highlighting the preservation and effective promotion of the unique traditional cultural values of ethnic groups as invaluable assets for sustainable tourism development.

She also urged ministries, agencies and sectors to provide favourable conditions for the Northwest provinces and HCM City to accelerate fast and sustainable tourism development, while encouraging capable domestic and foreign enterprises to research, propose, and implement appropriately scaled investment projects to drive the region’s tourism growth in the new period.

Secretary of the Dien Bien provincial Party Committee Tran Quoc Cuong affirmed the festival aims to create a distinctive system of economic–cultural–tourism products for the Northwest, grounded in local identity yet capable of reaching regional and international markets. This, he said, will enable the Northwest provinces to actively integrate into broader tourism value chains, while boosting domestic consumption and local economic growth.

On September 20 morning, Vice President Xuan visited the Dien Bien provincial Ethnic Minority Boarding High School, where she presented scholarships to disadvantaged students./.