Rural tourism: VnSAT coffee landscape area helps in developing the sector

Data from the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association shows that the country is currently the second largest coffee exporter in the world with a total annual export volume of about 1.6-1.8 million tonnes per year. The turnover is estimated to be about USD2.6-2.8 billion per year.

With the aim to bring the values of coffee into tourism and give tourists a deeper experience of the local culture, the Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project (VnSAT) has been supporting two coffee cooperatives in Gia Nghia City, Dak Nong Province to set up a sustainable landscape coffee model combining tourism that will bring a variety of experiences to tourists.

The experiences include visiting a coffee garden under the forest canopy, experiencing the production and processing of specialty coffee, drinking coffee and enjoying the Gong culture of the Central Highlands region, as well as going shopping for different kinds of coffee.

Pham Van Thach, director of Dak Nong Organic Agriculture Cooperative said the cooperative has a total area of 250ha to grow coffee trees, flowers and some other fruit trees. It has been set up following the model of landscape combine with tourism since 2017.

Currently, the cooperative can welcome visitors to experience a variety of tourism products, he said.

The model is hoped to bring a new experience for tourists, he said.

Visiting coffee garden

Visiting the coffee garden of the VnSAT Project, tourists will have interesting experiences about the coffee production process:

+ From January to July every year: tourists could visit the coffee garden, learning about the famous Kien Vang coffee.

+ From the end of February to the end of April: tourists could visit the garden when the coffee flowers are in full bloom, participating in collecting coffee flowers to make tea as well as roasting and tasting coffee.

+ From October to December: tourists could visit the garden when the coffee is ripening, participating in harvesting, enjoying the coffee berries at the garden, drying the coffee the greenhouse together with coffee growers, and roasting and tasting the coffee.

+ At other times of the year: tourists could visit the garden under the forest canopy, learning about types of Vietnamese coffees, especially the famous Kien Vang coffee that is only available at VnSAT’s garden, roasting and tasting the coffee.

Enjoying Gong culture

The Central Highlands region is home to 47 ethnic groups with unique cultural values from architecture, living features, customs, practices and festivals.

Exploiting the strength of coffee in tourism is also exploiting the typical cultural beauty of the Central Highlands region. Therefore, since December 2021, the VnSAT project has supported training on the Central Highlands cultural space and Gong performance for the two cooperatives to be ready to serve tourists.

Going shopping

To meet the demand for coffee shopping of tourists, the project has cooperated with Golden Bean Company (Shin coffee) to produce a set of products branded Landscape Coffee with beautiful packaging design and the prices range from USD3 - 10 per product. These products will be displayed at the coffee tasting and experiencing space of the two cooperatives.

Vu Le Anh, Director of Co May Tourism Company, said that the unit planned to build a coffee tourism product since 2015.

However, we have not found any destination that has full of factors to attract tourists with many interesting experiences such as the landscape coffee gardens of the VnSAT project over the past time, she said.

The biggest difficulty that the kind of garden is facing is that the traffic to the garden is still quite limited and the 45-seat car carrying the tourists has to stop on the road and the tourists have to go on foot quite far to reach the garden, she said.

Pham Hung Vy, deputy director of project said that the model has helped local growers to increase productivity and efficiency in agricultural production.

The model also opens up a new development direction, including both agriculture and tourism development, creating additional sources of income for local residents, he added.

Regarding tourism, the model will bring many new experiences to visitors, he said.

In addition to enjoying coffee, tourists will have interesting experiences, being introduced to the coffee production culture of local people, he said.

The project will continue to support the two cooperatives to invest in infrastructure, connecting and forming a link between coffee production and tourism, he said.