Community tourism, and how to choose a host

In the Delta, community-based tourism usually means a group of neighbouring households who host visitors together: one family runs the rooms, another cooks, a third has the boat, a fourth the fish ponds, and the guests move between them. Homestays began along the Tien and Hau rivers more than thirty years ago, with An Binh and Binh Hoa Phuoc islets among the first.

Three current examples show the range. On An Binh, more than twenty households take guests and nine have won ASEAN homestay awards. On Con Son, a cooperative formed in 2022 with twenty official members coordinates visits on an islet of more than seventy households. In Cho Lach, the then district launched the brand of a tourism culture village in 2024, planned since 2019, across four hamlets of nursery and flower growers.

The ASEAN Homestay Standard, published by the ASEAN Secretariat in 2016, is a useful yardstick even where no award is involved. Among its requirements:

• At least five registered homestay households in the village, not a single business
• Guest bedrooms separate from family bedrooms, and no more than four spare bedrooms given to guests per house
• Fresh bed linen for each new guest; at least one toilet or bathroom for guests with a lock and clean water
• Mosquito nets or coils, mesh where needed, and no breeding sites around the house
• Hosts who have completed a basic homestay course; safety staff trained in first aid; safety briefings
• Benefits that flow to the community: local staff, local suppliers, local crafts

The four-bedroom limit is the telling one. It describes a family home with a few guests, which is what most travellers imagine and what the largest houses no longer are.

We do not publish a percentage that reaches each family, because we have no independent figure for it and will not invent one. Our principle is simpler and checkable: the household's charge for the room, meals and activities is set by the household and appears on your quote as its own line, separate from the car, the guide and our margin. The community activities on Con Son are paid to the households that run them, at their published prices.

You can add to that directly: buy drinks from the family shop, buy candy, fruit or seedlings from the people who made them, and use the neighbour's boat rather than one brought in from town.

The pricing page shows every line of a quote.