Sapa Tourism: Growth Rate and Cultural Identity on the Same Road?

June 8, 2009 - PRLog -- It will surely take you by a surprise visiting Sapa these days because of a strange Sapa. Keeping its particular beauty as a 1,600m high mountainous area, Sapa is developing into a crowded tourism town with such professional services that people may worry whether Sapa will have its traditional culture lost by “the modern”?

Fast development in services
Although Sapa is a small mountainous town in Lao Cai province, it has a very good tourism infrastructure. Great deal of hotels and restaurants have been built in the last few years with modern services like massage, sauna and karaoke, etc to satisfy the demand of visitors. As reported by the Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism, the number of staying facilities increased from 42 in the year 2000 to 148 in the year 2008 with more than 2300 rooms, including 10 luxury hotels ranked from two to four stars. Additionally, the service of home stay has developed in villages. There are now 81 households doing the service of home stay in Sapa.

Sapa also has the potential in calling investors investing in big projects such as Ham Rong and Thanh Kim ecological tourism sites and the luxury hotel Victoria…

Compared to other Northern tourism provinces, Sapa has better tourism services. While tourists may find it difficult seeking and selecting special products in other provinces, there are plentiful of products offered for sale everywhere in the market and in streets. Son who is working for Vinaconex said it was very easy for him to find lovely souvenirs for my his girlfriend and colleagues such as brocade sacs, broidered mobile phone bags, animals made of wood, bamboo and coconut which are very nice, strange-looking and reasonable pricing, valued from five to some tens of thousand dongs.

All the shop-assistants, people and honda om drivers are doing good jobs in tourism. They play as non-professional tour guides with understandings about the local tourism and fluency in speaking English. Even peddling children can give advices or guidance about tourism destinations in Sapa. According to Long, our tour guide, this is very natural because there is no production or business industry in Sapa, the living of people here totally depends on tourism. A local little girl happily said that her income is now much higher, she used to earn VND300,000 per month few years ago but now VND1.2 million instead. Her sharing reminds me of the congratulation of Dao Duy Quat Deputy Director of the Central Commission for Propaganda and Ideological Education that Sapa’s income per capita which was equal to a fourth of the province’s in 1981 has now reached the number four times higher than that of the province. This is really a positive figure about Sapa’s development future but it also equivocally poses me and other people a concern.

Will there be change in cultural value?
Many tourists feel very pleased to discover the land and the people of Sapa for their first visit here. Before leaving Sapa, they do not forget taking some memory photos in front of the Stone Church with the local people and they are happy to meet shy Muong girls in colourful traditional costumes who are very friendly and hospitable. No sooner had they felt happy with the photos than they were asked to pay fee for the photo models. It is said that this situation is now very popular in Sapa and many tourists fall into such half laughing and half crying and dilemma cases.

You may feel glad to see local girls in traditional dresses accompanying as tourist guides for foreign tourists but you may feel sad to see some informal gripping hands or laugh in which no shyness to be found between local girls and foreign tourists. They play the role as tour guides to get service payment.

Love market, the specialty of Sapa, is buried in oblivion partly by some uncultured tourists and mostly by commercial factor, operation of the market is only the performance serving tourists. Not a long time ago, my friend chanced to catch a familiar sight in the TV in which three Mong guys aged 14 or 15 dance around playing the pan-pipe beside a couple passionately looking each other, curious tourists are surrounding them shouting. It turned out to be that they are performing to serve the tourists.

It is obvious that a day by day developing Sapa with better infrastructure and stores growing in a hustle is gradually hiding its natural and ancient beauty. In addition, the low stability in service price showing unprofessional style of the tourism industry is restricting the development of the industry in Sap. According to a staff working for May Hong hotel, the average price for a single room which is VND150,000-200,000 may rocket to VND300,000-500,000 depending on the number of tourists. The price of a VIP room may reach VND1 million in the peak season. The price of other services is different somewhere. The steam ironing price for a suit has been reduced from VND50,000 to VND30,000 because of the rejection of tourists.

Besides, some traditional handicraft industries are being lost in oblivion, giving the place to industrial brocade cloth. The number of children leaving schools for tour guides has been remarkably increased in the recent time.

Facing this situation, it is advisable for the local authority to design a comprehensive strategy to provide guidance to tourism exploiting agencies and to improve the awareness of people in keeping and developing the cultural characters of Sapa. Only by this way can Sapa achieve long-lasting and stable development.

Thu Huyen

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