Southeast Asia Information Port (www.dnyxxg.com) reports that Hanoi's nighttime tourism industry has long suffered from a lack of diverse offerings, limiting tourists' choices. After dinner, most visitors are limited to exploring Hoan Kiem Lake, strolling through the Old Town, or sampling street food, highlighting a weakness in its nighttime offerings. In contrast, globally renowned tourist cities experience peak activity in their cultural, entertainment, and service industries from 6 PM to the early morning, generating substantial economic benefits and pointing the way for Hanoi's cultural and tourism upgrade.
To further tap into the city's development potential and revitalize cultural and tourism consumption, the 4th session of the 17th Hanoi People's Council formally approved a resolution on investment and operation of nighttime businesses. This resolution explicitly identifies developing the nighttime economy as a crucial lever for the coordinated development of the capital's economy, culture, and tourism, aiming to make it a new core engine for service industry growth.
The 2025 ranking of the world's most attractive nightlife cities published by Time Out magazine shows that international metropolises such as Las Vegas, Madrid, Paris, Shanghai, and Berlin have moved beyond a single shopping and nighttime tourism model, building a diversified nighttime experience ecosystem that integrates culture, art, food, and music. Paris attracts visitors with multicultural parties and trendy music venues; Shanghai creates immersive pedestrian streets and a friendly service system; Berlin revitalizes urban public spaces for nighttime cultural activities; and Dubai and Mexico City blend local culture with modern entertainment to extend tourist stays. These mature nighttime economy models are worth learning from.
International practice has fully demonstrated that the nighttime economy is a core component of the cultural tourism, service, and creative economy development in major cities. In fact, Hanoi possesses a natural advantage for developing distinctive nighttime tourism. The night view of Hoan Kiem Lake, the ancient streets, weekend street music performances, and nighttime tours of the Thang Long Imperial City and Hoa Lo Prison all embody unique local nighttime cultural charm. In an industry trend where various regions are vying to extend tourist stays and increase spending, Hanoi's development of the nighttime economy is not simply about extending operating hours, but about comprehensively enhancing the city's cultural tourism competitiveness and expanding its development space through innovative cultural tourism products and richer experiential scenarios.
Bui Hoai Son, a full-time member of the Culture and Society Committee of the National Assembly of Vietnam and an associate professor, stated that Hanoi boasts a millennium of cultural heritage and a profound historical foundation, with its various ancient streets, bridges, and buildings offering unique nighttime tourism resources. Scientifically planning nighttime business formats, integrating food, art, and local culture into nighttime consumption scenarios, can empower the nighttime economy with cultural "soft power," effectively extending tourists' stay, increasing spending levels, and continuously enhancing the capital's core competitiveness in cultural tourism.
Vu Van Tuyen, General Manager of Travellogy, also pointed out that Hanoi's core advantage in nighttime tourism is not its commercialized, bustling atmosphere, but its millennia-old cultural heritage. He stated that the development of Hanoi's nighttime economy needs to be based on local cultural heritage, abandoning the homogeneous competition model that relies solely on lighting and sound effects. Currently, tourists are not lacking in time for nighttime tours, but rather in unique, immersive experiences. The core of the nighttime economy is to extend the experience duration and enhance the city's value, allowing tourists to appreciate Hanoi's appearance during the day and understand the city's soul at night.
Tourists and citizens alike have high expectations for the upgrading of Hanoi's nighttime economy. German tourist Simon expressed his deep impression of Hanoi's cityscape and hoped for more interactive nighttime activities to enhance the city's atmosphere and friendliness. Citizen Hoang Minh Chan suggested that while expanding nighttime leisure and entertainment venues, the city should uphold its core local traditional culture, maintain a strong foundation of social security, and create a nighttime tourism environment that is both distinctive and welcoming.
Industry experts generally believe that upgrading Hanoi's nighttime economy urgently needs to move beyond the misconception of "emphasizing projects while neglecting planning" and construct a systematic development system centered on cultural heritage. Vu Van Tuyen proposed that, taking advantage of the current reorganization of the 126 communes and wards, Hanoi can optimize the spatial layout of nighttime tourism to address the problems of concentrated business formats and unbalanced regional development. Currently, Hanoi's nighttime economy is highly concentrated in core areas such as Hoan Kiem Lake, the Old Quarter, and Xie Xian Street, leading to severe congestion in some areas and leaving much of the region's cultural and tourism potential untapped.
In response, he proposed a differentiated development strategy: establishing a core area for nighttime cultural heritage based on Hoan Kiem Lake and the ancient streets; developing high-quality festivals, arts, and entertainment businesses around West Lake; creating a new nighttime economic corridor along the Red River; cultivating rural nighttime tourism and agricultural tourism in the ancient villages of Shanxi, Ba Vi, and Tang Lam; and developing creative cultural complexes and large-scale themed events in areas such as Gia Lam, Dong Anh, and Me Ling.
According to the plan, if each communal area develops at least one distinctive nighttime tourism product, Hanoi will break away from its single-point development model and form a comprehensive, distinctive nighttime cultural tourism network. According to a resolution of the Hanoi Municipal Council, by 2035, the local nighttime economy is expected to contribute 7% to 8% of the city's GDP, continuously driving steady growth in the service industry. This measure is not only an economic initiative to boost consumption but also a long-term strategy to support the city's cultural heritage and enhance its overall capabilities.
Industry insiders stated that the ultimate goal of Hanoi's nighttime economy development is to transform from simply offering "nighttime activities" to providing "cultural experiences to explore." In the future, Hanoi will leverage its millennia-old cultural heritage to create a differentiated and distinctive nighttime tourism system, transforming tourists from passively seeking out nighttime activities to actively exploring the city's nighttime cultural stories, truly revitalizing the core vitality of the capital's nighttime economy.
