On this occasion, hotels and hostels in Ha Long city run at full capacity.

During four days of the festival, nearly 500,000 tourists visited Hạ Long Bay, five times over the normal day. On May 1 alone, 16,000 visitors toured around the bay.

This year’s Ha Long Tourism Festival took the theme of Hanoi to celebrate the 1,000 birthday of the capital city. The festival included a series of diverse activities, including fireworks, boat races, a conference of the world’s most beautiful bays, an international tourism-trade fair, exhibitions, concerts and a beauty contest.

Highlight of the festival was Hạ Long Carnaval, a street carnival when symbolic images of Hanoi was paraded alongside thousands of professional and amateur artists from both inside and outside the country. Besises, other activities namely music performance, dancing show, road show, carnival festival, circus performance and fireworks display made Hạ Long Carnaval become the biggest street carnival in Việt Nam so far.

Quảng Ninh’s tourism sector expects to welcome 5.2 million visitors, including 2.5 million foreigners this year./.