Improving Technical Facilities and Infrastructure

Due to the population growth and settlement, the bamboo groves of the village have almost disappeared, leaving only a few bamboo bushes. On that basis, I propose to build (restore) a beautiful and unique bamboo landscape in the two peripheral areas of Mong Phu village. Building this landscape will enhance the countryside, increase the green area in Duong Lam, and create a certain attraction.

Waterfront landscape: Waterfront is an indispensable image in paintings of Vietnamese villages, so building a symbolic waterfront will bring a lot of inspiration to tourists, moreover, this waterfront will later be a combined element to provide tourism products related to fishing and catching fish. The villages in Duong Lam are all near the Tich River area, including a small branch of the Tich River flowing through the village. This is a favorable condition to build a waterfront landscape in the village area.

Linking Duong Lam ancient village with destinations: Currently, with its relatively favorable location, Duong Lam ancient village can have connections with different locations such as Dong Mo - Ngai Son, Ao Vua, Khoang Xanh, Suoi Hai, Ba Vi National Park, CK9, along with promoting and creating an image for Duong Lam tourism so that international tourists who have trips to visit the Northwest (Hoa Binh, Son La, Dien Bien) can visit the ancient village before continuing their journey.

3.2.2. Improve technical facilities and infrastructure

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Currently, the accommodation facilities in Duong Lam still do not meet the quality requirements for visitors. Tourists sometimes have to stay overnight in Son Tay Town, which is not convenient for sightseeing. Therefore, one of the important goals is to solve the accommodation facilities for tourists. That is the premise for creating long-term and experiential tours for tourists. In fact, in Duong Lam ancient village, it is impossible to develop a widespread accommodation system, nor can it be possible to build accommodation facilities, hotels, and high-class motels in the ancient village area because it is a top priority for conservation work. To create accommodation facilities for tourists, it is necessary to first solve the planning problem and disperse the population out of Duong Lam. Therefore, it is necessary to develop scatteredly in neighboring villages. And to meet the accommodation needs of overnight visitors, it is necessary. Attracting local communities to participate in community tourism development activities (homestay) by using the local people's own material means to serve their accommodation.

guests. But to improve the quality of accommodation services, it is necessary to help the local community improve its existing facilities, to ensure the necessary amenities for tourists such as: tables, cups, houses... must be clean and at least have elements to ensure that guests enjoy and satisfy their needs, household appliances such as televisions, water heaters, bedding, pillows, internet,... cooking utensils and food service for tourists and especially the restroom... Only then will tourists want to stay and use the services of the people.

For restaurants, pay attention to instructing people to make dishes that ensure hygiene and cleanliness, make traditional dishes, with local flavors, with dishes that suit the taste of customers. Sometimes they do not like local dishes, so we have to know how to prepare popular dishes to provide to customers. It is necessary to maximize the local culinary culture, especially rustic dishes with the flavors of the people here and regional specialties such as: roasted pork, sugarcane chicken, soy sauce... Drinks include tea, herbal tea, wine...

It is necessary to invest in building more service areas to meet the needs of eating, entertainment, and living of tourists. Only then will it bring in higher revenue, and at the same time, it will also retain tourists so they can stay longer in Duong Lam ancient village.

Arrange and install clean toilets at suitable rest stops along the heritage tour route.

There should be a map to guide visitors to the heritage site, and additional signs with clear and easy-to-understand content should be installed.

In addition, it is necessary to focus on building a parking lot for vehicles for groups of tourists visiting and traveling in Duong Lam ancient village. However, the operation and management of this parking lot will be owned by the people under the management and supervision of the Duong Lam ancient village management board. Investing in lending capital to people to buy vehicles will meet the needs of tourists, making it easy, compact, simple and satisfying for visitors.

Infrastructure: To attract and meet the needs of tourists and to give them a good impression of Duong Lam ancient village, infrastructure construction is essential. This construction should mainly focus on upgrading the road system, domestic water, medical stations, parking lots, ATMs, etc.

In addition, it is necessary to complete the infrastructure such as repairing the village road system. Although it is made of bricks, it should not be concreted to lose the ancient beauty of the ancient village.

3.2.3. Attracting local communities to participate in community tourism to improve labor quality

The local community plays an extremely important role in the development of local tourism. Without the participation of the local community, tourism activities will be difficult to take place. Especially for community tourism, the participation of the local community is a decisive factor in the development and effectiveness of this type of tourism. Therefore, to improve and develop community tourism in Duong Lam ancient village, there must be policies to attract the participation of the local community. Special attention must be paid to the interests of community members so that they can provide good quality services and bring high economic efficiency.

In Duong Lam, the people who do tourism are mainly local people who live on agriculture. Unlike other destinations, tourism in Duong Lam ancient village depends heavily on local people: The people are the owners of Duong Lam ancient village, they can play the role of owners of the relic, they also play the role of conservationists when they, and no one else, will directly protect a heritage work or cultural beauty. For tourism to become their main industry, local authorities must have support policies, through training courses and initial skill development for them. Train them in basic knowledge of tourism with the simplest knowledge so that they can absorb and apply it to their work. Create conditions for them to participate in tourism activities. Improve skills for people participating in community tourism such as: Strengthen training in cooking, eating for tourists, cleaning rooms, cleaning, decorating houses and welcoming guests. Training in guest reception skills, training in the attitude of the waiters to be enthusiastic, attentive, hospitable, and welcoming actions to ensure friendliness towards tourists.

Training the next generation: There should be policies to encourage local children to study tourism, or send local children to schools that offer tourism training, and neighboring provinces, to learn. So that later generations of local children can return to their hometowns.

to work and serve his homeland as well as to convey to the local people in Duong Lam.

It is necessary to pay attention to training professional qualifications as well as foreign language skills for staff, creating conditions for young people as well as local people to participate in tourism in order to create conditions to communicate with international visitors when coming to the village.

Send management and service staff to study and improve their skills in welcoming tourists.

Local communities participate in tourism but initially they do not have good means of exploitation, at this time the local government needs to have policies to support means and loans to help them invest in tourism exploitation. Support funding so that people have capital to open souvenir stalls to serve tourists or other services in tourism. Support capital for people so that they have conditions to open souvenir kiosks or do business in other tourism services...

Exemption of business tax for the first year for some households doing business in customer service. Support for people with preferential capital to improve their lives, have conditions to do a good job of cleaning tourist areas, not littering and affecting the ecological environment of tourist areas. When life improves, people become more civilized and when they see the benefits of tourism, they will be more aware of protecting the environment and doing better tourism. They will be conscious of protecting the eco-tourism area and contribute to propaganda to remind tourists not to affect the environment when visiting.

The management board and local government should provide jobs that local people can do if they participate in tourism activities. Organizing villages to produce handicrafts and souvenirs for tourists, allowing them to participate in more services such as: renting means of transport for tourists, guiding tourists in the process of making candy, making soy sauce, growing vegetables, growing rice, serving food and accommodation is a way to increase income for local residents. In addition, it is necessary to support people to sell products such as soy sauce, peanut candy, etc. to build a brand to other countries, and create a position in the market.

Improve labor quality

Training content: Community tourism is a form of tourism that depends entirely on local people. Tourist experiences depend on

The quality of services is provided by the local people themselves. Therefore, in order to improve the quality of tourism, it is necessary to train and improve the quality of human resources.

Education to improve understanding of tourists, this is the training content to improve people's understanding of different types of tourists in order to better organize the reception and service work to create a good impression on tourists. This content also includes the work of understanding the tastes of tourists from different countries and territories, providing the characteristics of cultural traditions of each country and territory, understanding the expectations and habits of tourists, understanding different interests (youth, the elderly, people traveling with families, individuals and people traveling in groups ...).

Training on skills to welcome tourists, serve guests during their stay, introduce and guide guests. Local people need to be trained on how to speak in communication, attitudes and actions to welcome tourists, ensuring harmony, enthusiasm, safety and friendliness towards tourists.

Professional and enthusiastic service attitude determines whether customers will return to the tourist area or not, so first of all, we must regularly check and train tourism workers at the tourist area. The attitude of the service staff must be enthusiastic, attentive, and hospitable, making customers feel comfortable and impressed when coming to travel.

Send staff, managers and service staff to study and improve their skills in welcoming tourists.

Low professional skills have not met the needs of tourists. Therefore, Son Tay province needs to open vocational training courses for households to directly participate. The form is to open short-term training courses, combined with vocational training centers to improve skills to serve local people.

Guide for locals on how to serve food to tourists. This content guides households organizing tourism in local houses about the best places to serve breakfast to tourists, how to learn about tourists' dietary needs and requirements for ensuring hygiene in tourists' meals.

Guide residents on how to arrange furniture inside the motel. This content mainly provides information on basic equipment, requirements for maintaining household hygiene such as cleaning and regularly washing beds, walls,

ceiling, windows, doors, lighting, furniture. Decorate the motel with harmonious colors, balanced with the whole. Special services for tourists such as: free drinks for tourists, fresh flowers in the room for tourists...

Training on how to provide services to tourists. This content aims to provide knowledge to the people, especially the hosts, on how to treat and take care of tourists, including small things like borrowing bicycles, providing guests with information on local communications, culture and history, and information on the rights and obligations of hosts and tourists.

Training content related to regulations related to tourist accommodation activities. Including general regulations such as fire prevention and fighting, tourist inspection and specific regulations for tourists to create conditions for people to understand and implement regulations according to the law.

Tourism business training such as equipping local people with the ability to analyze the market supply and demand, build and improve products to meet tourist needs. Build product position in the market, determine appropriate prices, sign contracts or partnerships with travel companies and related partners…

Foreign language training aims to improve the foreign language proficiency of local people to facilitate their ability to communicate with visitors, especially in languages that are popular with visitors such as English, French, German, Japanese, etc. In addition, it is necessary to open advanced courses for those who already have knowledge of foreign languages or those who participate in tour guiding activities. Local authorities can send them to attend tourism training courses to improve their foreign language skills. From there, they can return to their locality and become professional tour guides.

Training on promotion and advertising, to help people know how to create documents to promote and advertise community tourism here such as brochures, books, newspapers, travel guides... At the same time, provide basic forms of propaganda such as press agencies, publishers, travel agencies, tourism offices...

Training formats can be:

On-site training: This is a form of training in which the management board and relevant agencies and departments can open specialized and professional classes.

Provide tourism services right at the place where people live by inviting the Tourism Management Board or experienced experts to local conferences and seminars to disseminate to people experiences and operations on professional and technical aspects of community tourism.

Training through sending local people's children to schools with tourism training in neighboring provinces and regions, especially schools with tourism training in Hanoi. This is a form of combined training but will bring high efficiency because after finishing the course, the children can return to their hometown to work and disseminate and convey to the local people. Thus, creating conditions for children to study professional skills at schools with specialized training in tourism not only helps their own profession but also improves all other people.

The Executive Board can cooperate with the Duong Lam Ancient Village Tourism Management Board to sign contracts with training institutions such as Hai Phong Private University, Tourism Vocational College, Hanoi Tourism College, Hanoi Open University, Hanoi University of Culture to coordinate tourism services, open training courses, improve professional skills for staff, organize short-term training courses for local people, train tour guides at the site professionally, in addition, the locality should also have a plan to train local people to become direct tour guides in the ancient village.

Let people visit and learn at places with developed community tourism activities such as the community tourism model in SaPa and Mai Chau, Hoi An... Encourage households to learn from each other, new households should refer to the experiences of households with experience in serving tourists. It is possible to organize meetings between households in the district and city to exchange lessons learned about providing tourism products. At the same time, it is necessary to educate and improve the intellectual level and behavior of local people towards tourists to be able to develop ecotourism.

Thus, by training local people to perform well in tourism service skills, community tourism in Duong Lam ancient village will have the opportunity to develop long-term and sustainably. This will make tourism activities here offer unique and rich tourism products, thereby increasing the opportunity for people to have more jobs and improving their lives.

3.2.4. Promote community tourism promotion in Duong Lam ancient village.

When building a tourism image for Duong Lam, it is necessary to ensure that it is simple, attractive and distinctive from other localities.

Duong Lam has human advantages and architectural relics imbued with the traditional features of Vietnamese villages. Therefore, to build its image, Duong Lam can use the slogans "Duong Lam - ancient beauty", "Duong Lam - journey back to the roots".

In addition to building the local image through specific activities, Duong Lam needs to build a campaign to widely promote that tourism image. Here, the author proposes focusing on promoting tourism on the Internet. Because according to the results of research on the media channel, tourists learn about Duong Lam tourism the most through the Internet (46% compared to 13% through magazines and 5% through television, the remaining 36% is through word of mouth).

Currently, there are many tourism websites, including an official tourism website about Duong Lam: duonglamtourist.com, I propose some changes to increase the attractiveness of the content and interface. The website needs to have a simple, easy-to-use interface along with typical images of Duong Lam ancient village. Regarding the content, the website needs to emphasize the tourism image of Duong Lam. In addition, the website provides complete information about tourism products in Duong Lam (historical relics, cultural heritage, traditional soy sauce, natural landscapes...). Information about Duong Lam village needs to be updated continuously. More importantly, the website needs to introduce to tourists the tourism companies that are operating tours in Duong Lam, the prices and forms of tourism when going on tours. Next, duonglamtourist.com needs to complete the step of providing tourism information in many languages, linking with famous websites such as Google, MSN, Infoseek, ... to make it easier for foreign tourists to search. That is one of the important steps to provide information about Duong Lam to more people, in order to attract more tourists to Duong Lam.

Promotion through fairs, conferences, seminars: The Management Board of Duong Lam Ancient Village needs to develop and design leaflets and brochures about the tourism model here or integrate them into publications, general propaganda and promotional materials and distribute them to tourists at fairs, seminars and conferences on tourism.

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