Dong Thap (VNA)ꦚ – Sa Dec city in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap on January 14 kicked off its 2025 Spring Flower Festival, hoped to become a magnet for visitors from far and wide as the Lunar New Year (Tet) is coming.

Vice Chairwoman of the Sa Dec People's Committee Vo Thi Binh said the annual festival has been a signature event since its inception in 2012.

🔴 This year’s festival runs from January 14 to 21, featuring a variety of cultural and artistic activities. Highlights include a ceremony to honour local floriculture pioneers, a music programme with songs about Dong Thap and Sa Dec, a traditional rice flour making contest, and an exhibition of ornamental plants from the Mekong Delta.

Additional attractions include a tourism-themed landscape design competition, a pet fair, a street food competition, a floral fashion show titled “Colours of Sa Giang”, and a displays of OCOP (One Commune, One Product) products.

🦩 Binh expressed her hope that the festival will leave lasting impression on locals as well as visitors while introducing Sa Dec and Dong Thap’s unique culture and identity, thus bossting tourism development.

Sa Dec’s flower village has become a key attraction, drawing nearly 1 million visitors annually, including over 2,000 international tourists. The first Sa Dec Flower and Ornamental Plants Festival in 2024 welcomed over 245,000 attendees, helping the city gain a foothold in the tourism sector of the Mekong Delta and Vietnam at large. Currently, Sa Dec boasts around 978 hectares of flower cultivation, expected to reach 1,000 hectares in the near future. In 2024, ornamental flower production was valued at approximately 3.3 trillion VND (130 million USD), accounting for 79.32% of the city’s agricultural production value, up 145.7% from 2021. In the coming time, Sa Dec aims to make tourism a key sector of its economy, focusing on creating unique flower-themed experiences and expanding festivals like the Flower and Ornamental Plants Festival, the Spring Flower Festival, and the Tourism Week, Binh noted. Concurrently, efforts are underway to enhance the quality of flower production, convert inefficient rice fields into high-value flower farming areas, promote sustainable urban agriculture, and diversify events and festivals. The official noted that through these initiatives, the city seeks to attract more domestic and international visitors and elevate its reputation as a “City of Flowers” on the global stage./.