Vietnam's northern Quang Ninh Province, home to World Heritage-listed Ha Long Bay, is launching a campaign to lure more Chinese tourists, according to local newspaper Vietnam News on Monday.

The province has invited directors of 11 tourism departments from southern China, representatives of travel agencies and tourism service companies from both China and Vietnam to Ha Long Bay to discuss cooperative measures to promote tours to the World Heritage site by land and sea.

A major international tourism promotion conference will be held in December to highlight Ha Long Bay and tours by sea. Now, one ship arrives daily from southern China carrying some 700 passengers to the bay.

Since Ha Long Bay has been recently nominated in a global online competition to be named a natural wonder of the world, Quang Ninh has welcomed increasing numbers of tourists. More and more foreign cruise ships are coming to the bay.

According to the Quang Ninh Tourism Department, nearly 2.2 million foreign and local tourists traveled to the province, mainly to Ha Long Bay, in the first half of this year, up 32 percent against the same period last year. Of the tourists, 767,500 are from other countries and regions, mostly China, South Korea and France.

(Xinhua News Agency November 20, 2007)