World Heritage on the Path to Sustainable Development

Over the decades since being recognized as a World Cultural Heritage, with the investment attention of the State and the joint help of international friends, the ancient capital of Hue, the ancient town of Hoi An and the My Son temple complex - a prominent heritage site of Vietnam in the Central region - have been strongly revived and are on the path of sustainable development.

Digital transformation application

Digital transformation in tourism is an inevitable direction, in the context of strong development of science and technology and the trend of accessing information and images of tourist destinations, helping the tourism industry to enhance experiences, creating new opportunities and values.

Currently, the three world cultural heritages are focusing on applying digital transformation in selling electronic tickets, digitizing artifacts and heritage works to introduce and widely promote them on cyberspace, while creating a foundation for restoration and conservation work.

Recently, the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board has promoted the application of digital transformation, contributing to promoting heritage values in the direction of developing a smart tourism ecosystem.

When visitors visit myson360.vn, they can grasp the entire tour map, with clear 3D visual effects, the architectural works appear with different, vivid perspectives, describing each temple tower area from a 360-degree spatial perspective.

A large number of visitors to the My Son World Cultural Heritage Site experience the multilingual commentary. (Photo: Doan Huu Trung/ VNA)

In addition, the My Son Metaverse/VR 360 product integrates a virtual tour guide feature to introduce an overview of the My Son temple complex, or an automatic commentary application with 40 stories designed according to suitable sightseeing routes for visitors to choose from in many different languages.

Deputy Director in charge of the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board, Nguyen Cong Khiet, shared that with international tourists accounting for 90% of visitors to My Son, the unit focuses on applying digital transformation into service products to improve service quality.

In 2025, the Management Board is continuing to implement a 3D digitization program of about 500 valuable Cham artifacts found through archaeological excavations, as well as promoting two national treasures, Mukhalinga and My Son A10 Temple, thereby spreading the outstanding global value of the temple complex with a history of thousands of years ago.

Recognizing the important role of heritage digitization, in recent years, the Hue Monuments Conservation Center has coordinated with a number of digital technology companies to deploy 3D digitization of about 11,000 antiques and artifacts.

This is an important premise, solving the problem of exploiting heritage resources to serve the cultural industry, heritage economy as well as long-term preservation.

The Hue Monuments Conservation Center and Phygital Labs Joint Stock Company also launched the digital exhibition space “museehue.vn” that anyone, anywhere can visit and learn about, with the aim of spreading Vietnamese culture globally.

Director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Center Hoang Viet Trung shared that cooperation with digital technology companies is a new step in integrating the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage values, responding to the trend of digitalizing heritage and developing cultural industries.

Thereby, digitizing and storing the database of Nguyen Dynasty cultural heritage values not only helps to look up, consult and research conveniently but also serves as a place to effectively educate the younger generation to learn about heritage.

According to experts, the three world cultural heritages above were built mainly from wood, brick, and stone materials, located in areas with harsh weather conditions and increasingly severe climate change, so restoration work needs to be carried out regularly to maintain the stable achievements.

Digitizing heritage is an important factor to scientifically and clearly systematize the process of heritage restoration and conservation through each historical period.

For the heritage city of Hoi An, the application of information technology and digital transformation is also expanded in tourism service management, environmental management, traffic, and improving the quality of life of urban residents.

Heritage in the arms of the community

UNESCO's recommendations and guidelines on the exploitation and promotion of heritage are very clear and humane. Heritage serves people and society. Heritage is both an object of protection and brings value to the community and society.

When entering Hoi An ancient town, visitors feel like they are visiting a "living museum", where time seems to slow down, settling on every ancient house, on every street, every alley and in the "kind and humane" behavior of the people here.

Tourists visit Hoi An ancient town. (Photo: Do Truong/VNA)

With the characteristic that most of the ancient houses and places of worship in the old town are owned by individuals or groups, creating consensus in the community to join hands in preserving and promoting heritage values is a great success, bringing Hoi An to a high position on the tourism map of Vietnam and the world.

Located in a small alley on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, near the Japanese Covered Bridge, the Nguyen Tuong clan temple is the residence of the Minister of War, Nhuan Trach Marquis Nguyen Tuong Van, built in 1806.

This is one of the first relics to receive 75% of the State's funding for restoration in 2005. Mr. Dang Hung Tung, the caretaker and tour guide here, shared that the house has been recognized as a city-level architectural and artistic relic.

After the restoration, the family agreed to open the door to welcome tourists to visit. In addition to serving incense, the ticket money collected will also be used to maintain and preserve the relic.

According to the Hoi An World Cultural Heritage Conservation Center, currently, entrance tickets are sold for all tourist attractions in the old town, in which, many ancient houses, assembly halls, and clan churches located on the sightseeing route benefit from monthly ticket sales ranging from several tens of millions of VND to hundreds of millions of VND.

Hoi An Ward Party Secretary Nguyen Duc Binh said Hoi An is one of the few world cultural heritage sites in Vietnam with a densely populated community of about 10,000 people.

The economic activities of the people are directly or indirectly related to tourism services. It can be said that heritage is the common "rice pot" of the community, the bond that binds everyone together to protect the old town in the past time. There are families who only need to make small repairs in the old house but they voluntarily go to the authorities to ask for permission because if they do it arbitrarily, it will distort the heritage.

Tourism development has brought a large number of visitors to Hoi An, making the lives and incomes of the people constantly improve. “In recent years, many people from other places have come to buy houses and do business in the old town, posing challenges to preserving Hoi An's cultural identity. This is a correct but not sufficient assessment, because Hoi An's history is a culture of people, water, and culture. Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors "transformed" Japanese, Chinese, and Western merchants into Hoi An people, living according to the traditional cultural lifestyle here.

Today, the locality will also have ways to help immigrants integrate into the local cultural flow, joining hands to enrich and enrich the cultural life of this world heritage site," Mr. Nguyen Duc Binh shared.

The My Son landscape protection area covers an area of up to 1,160 hectares, closely associated with the temple tower area. This is one of the criteria for UNESCO to recognize My Son as a World Cultural Heritage.

According to Nguyen Cong Khiet, Deputy Director in charge of the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board, in recent years, the unit has implemented many community-based forest protection solutions. For those who work in charcoal burning and wild honey exploitation, which pose a risk of causing forest fires, the Management Board has encouraged them to change jobs, become tree care and pruning staff, and participate in forest protection patrol teams.

In particular, the Cham tower restoration projects are all carried out directly by local workers under the guidance and supervision of foreign experts, thereby creating a source of experienced local human resources.

Since the early 2000s, a number of Cham people from Khanh Hoa province have been invited to My Son to join the art troupe, weave brocade, and make pottery to perform for tourists.

The local government has created conditions and supported Cham people working in My Son to be granted land, build houses, and settle down for a long time. After nearly 15 years working with the performing arts team serving tourists at the My Son temple complex, Mr. Thien Sanh Vu (35 years old), a Cham ethnic person, shared that he felt very happy to be selected and work right at the holy land, where there are temples built by his ancestors many centuries ago.

The performances, which combine musical instruments, costumes and traditional dances, always attract a large number of tourists, especially foreigners. It is a great joy for him and his colleagues to be attached to this land, contributing to introducing and promoting the beauty of the Cham cultural flow from the past to the present right at the world cultural heritage site.

Ngo Mon Gate represents the Hue Imperial City. (Photo: Vu Sinh/VNA)

To mobilize resources for the restoration, preservation and promotion of Hue's cultural heritage, the National Assembly and the Government have also issued specific policies such as the Hue Monuments Conservation Center being allowed to retain all entrance fees after deducting regular operating costs for restoration.

In 2022, the Government will establish the Hue Heritage Conservation Fund and assign Hue City to directly manage it to mobilize resources to invest in restoration, conservation, and development of Hue heritage values and invest in projects and items that have not been allocated funding from the state budget or have not been allocated enough funding.

In 2024, the project to preserve and restore the tomb of Empress Tu Du Nghi Thien Chuong with a budget of nearly 7 billion VND was completed from personal funding through the Hue Heritage Conservation Fund.

In addition, the Hue Royal Antiquities Museum (under the Hue Monuments Conservation Center) has recently received many valuable artifacts donated by collectors and philanthropists participating in auctions abroad, thereby showing that the community's cooperation in preserving heritage is being strongly promoted./.

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/di-san-the-gioi-tren-con-duong-phat-trien-ben-vung-post1062055.vnp