The Project for the Creation and Development of Special Tourism Products of Cần Thơ city for the period 2018-2020 and up to 2030, has defined its main task of developing river tourism, alongside MICE tourism. The maintenance and development of the Cái Răng floating market, an original product of river tourism, remains a challenge for the competent services of the city. On-site services are considered “monotonous” and do not interest visitors. Only some tourist agencies offer fruit and coffee tasting on the boat. On the other hand, the functioning of the floating market exposes many problems due to the entanglement of legal and management formalities; waste treatment and landscape protection; price control, etc. Mr. Vương Công Khanh, Acting Chairman of the Cái Răng district, informs us that the locality has organized numerous controls and punished the sale at exaggerated prices and sale by intermediary, but these acts are repeated because of difficulties in the entanglement of management between services and administrative levels.

To go to Cái Răng Floating Market, visitors can depart from Ninh Kiều, Bình Thủy or Phong Điền District by river. Although they are the most chosen, piers number 1 and An Bình (in Ninh Kiều district) are not officially recognized as docks serving tourism. Thus, many other “illegal” landing stages exist and this causes the soliciting of visitors. On the other hand, there is a lack of collaboration between the localities in sanctioning the violation of the law. In addition, the traders of the floating market, the wholesalers of agricultural products, are not tourism professionals. Modest incomes and precariousness force them to leave the floating market more and more. The maintenance and development of the floating market remain at the center of the concerns of tourism in Cần Thơ.

Mr. Nguyễn Hồng Hiếu, Director of the Hieutours Agency, explains that the floating market, intangible cultural heritage of humanity, cultural identity of Cần Thơ and the Mekong Delta, must be preserved and developed in a natural way. “We need to mobilize the participation of traders in tourism. Cần Thơ will have to have its own tourist boat dock and thus creating lines from the pier to the station in Cái Răng district, 300-400 m from the floating market. Visitors gather there and go to the floating market in small boats. We can therefore manage the number of visitors and offer work to local inhabitants. On the other hand, it is the visitors' need to live the floating market life, which we have seen in the sightseeing tours as a test. The localities will have to ensure the safety of nautical traffic and limit the comings and goings of motor sampans in the visiting area. Alongside this, green spaces will have to be developed by building docks and providing for check-in points at the floating market ”, he suggests.

For years, the Cái Răng Floating Market Conservation and Development Project and especially the very effective social security policies implemented by the Cái Răng district have really had a positive impact on the lives of the market inhabitants. However, some parts of the project no longer correspond to reality. The People's Committee of the district of Cái Răng therefore put forward the modifications concerning the construction of a wholesale market, tariff aid or the guarantee of outlets for products, coordination in the management, and punishment of violation of the law on tourism… As a result, the Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism of Cần Thơ and the People's Committee of the Cái Răng district have established a collaborative plan for the conservation of the floating market of 2021 by proposing solutions for the development of piers, the design, and implementation of green tourism projects, the construction of docks at the floating market, support for sales of agricultural products, the creation of significant activities, visitor experience, tourism skills courses for the inhabitants of the floating market ...

The Cái Răng floating market is not only a particular tourist product of Cần Thơ but also the cultural identity of the Mekong Delta. The whole community is responsible for the reasonable conservation and enhancement of the floating market. Cần Thơ tourism is mobilized to make the Cái Răng floating market an original tourist product attracting visitors by listening to the population for suitable directions and solutions.