The Hanoi Tourism Festival 2025 is not only an annual cultural and tourism event, but also a strong boost in the capital's sustainable tourism growth strategy, aiming to build Hanoi into a "Livable, friendly and creative city", a leading cultural destination in Asia and the world.
With tourists as the center, this year's Festival has created a lively open space, gathering more than 150 booths from prestigious tourism businesses, localities across the country and many international organizations. The event is a colorful picture of the beauty of culture, history, cuisine and people of Hanoi, but at the same time, it is also a place where technology and creativity are subtly inserted, opening up new and unique experiences never before seen.
Hanoi Tourism Festival at Thang Long Imperial Citadel
Traditional craft village exhibition booths
With the continuous development of technology and artificial intelligence, Hanoi's tourism industry is entering a period of strong transformation. According to Ms. Dang Huong Giang - Director of Hanoi Department of Tourism: "Renewing tourism products is a vital factor in the context of fierce competition between destinations. Technology not only helps improve the experience of tourists but also creates opportunities to effectively access international markets, especially young tourists."
From the first step into the festival grounds, visitors can clearly feel the meticulousness and novelty in the space design. Miniature scenes recreating unique destinations such as Hoan Kiem Lake, Temple of Literature, Duong Lam Ancient Village or Long Bien Bridge are vividly simulated, combined with virtual reality technology (VR) allowing viewers to "travel" through relic spaces, old streets, architectural heritage with just a pair of virtual reality glasses. These experiences are not only highly entertaining but also contribute to spreading historical and cultural values to young visitors, a generation that is closely attached to digital technology.
The festival attracts people of all ages to enjoy.
If technology is the language that connects the future, then cuisine is the living memory of Hanoi. The traditional culinary space at the festival is like a “symphony” of the taste, smell and color of the capital. There, Hanoi pho is still steaming hot, Ho Tay shrimp cakes are crispy next to cups of fragrant lotus tea or traditional sticky rice and sweet soup.
What is special this year is that the culinary space is not only limited to traditional dishes, but also has an exchange with international cuisine, with the presence of Japanese, Korean, French, Italian food stalls - where chefs demonstrate their skills and introduce cultural exchange through food. This combination shows the spirit of "opening to the world but preserving the identity" of modern Hanoi tourism.
Craft villages - the hands that preserve the soul of heritage
This year’s festival also dedicated a separate area to honor traditional craft villages, an indispensable part of Hanoi’s cultural identity. Here, artisans from Bat Trang pottery village, Van Phuc silk village, Dong Ho painting village, and to he making village directly demonstrated their manual crafting techniques.
The booths are not simply exhibition spaces, but also lively interactive spaces where visitors - especially children - can directly participate in creating products. These are valuable experiences, helping the younger generation understand more about the values of traditional crafts and the intricacies behind each "made in Hanoi" product.
Impressive exhibition space at the festival
Within the framework of the festival, many high-tech tourism products were introduced, from automatic commentary applications at relics, digital tourist maps integrated with AI, smart guided tours to travel experiences by drone and VR360. In particular, virtual reality relic tours made a strong impression, allowing visitors to "step into" the Thang Long Imperial Citadel of the Ly - Tran dynasties, or "sit" in an old classroom at the Temple of Literature through images reconstructed with 3D technology.
A lovely highlight of this year’s festival is the experience area dedicated to children, organized on the occasion of International Children’s Day June 1. With mini Robocon programming activities, drawing pictures of Hanoi, and participating in handicrafts, children not only have a useful playground but also have the opportunity to understand more about the city they live in through an innocent perspective.
These activities are an affirmation of Hanoi’s long-term strategy, nurturing the love for heritage from the youngest generation, thereby creating the foundation for a generation of internal tourists with knowledge, emotions and responsibility for national culture. In particular, Hanoi’s culinary space introduces traditional dishes such as pho, shrimp cakes, coffee, lotus tea, and sticky rice and sweet soup, which have received the attention of tourists.
Hanoi culinary space
Destination promotion - creating momentum for the tourism industry
In addition to the experiential activities, the festival is also a place to promote the image of Hanoi tourism nationwide and internationally. The exhibition space "Hanoi - a heritage destination, safe and attractive" introduces new tourism products such as the Imperial Citadel night tour, cycling tour through 36 streets, tourist routes along the Red River...
Businesses also took advantage of this opportunity to connect and cooperate, launch preferential travel packages, creating conditions for people and tourists to access high-quality services at reasonable costs. In just 5 days of the festival, Hanoi tourism earned more than 3,000 billion VND in revenue, a figure that shows the strong attraction of the capital in the context of post-pandemic tourism recovery.
Hanoi Tourism Festival 2025 is not only an entertainment event, but also a development manifesto of a growing city. From the combination of tradition and modernity, technology and emotion, tourists and local community - Hanoi is gradually affirming its identity as a multi-layered, sustainable and inspiring destination.
