According to the Da Nang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the total funding to develop the city’s cultural sector is expected to have reached 118.16 billion VND by the end of this year.  Of this, 38 billion VND should have been spent on local cultural activities, an increase of 50% year-on-year, whilst the remaining 80.16 billion was budgeted for the construction of cultural works.

By late October, over 30.5 billion VND from the city’s budget had been put into local cultural activities, fulfilling 80.4% of the year’s target.  However, as of 15 November only just over 26 billion VND had been spent on the construction of cultural works, representing only 33.35% of the target. 

A “bai choi” (singing while acting as playing cards) performance at the recent Tuy Loan Village Communal House Festival

The total number of tourists arriving in the city during 2014 is expected to reach an estimated 3.8 million, including 955,000 foreigners, which is up 21.9 % year-on-year and exceeds the year’s target by 5.6 %.  In addition, the city’s total tourism revenue is likely to have climbed 25.1% to over 9.7 trillion VND, surpassing 10.4% of the target. 

These figures were released at a meeting on Wednesday morning to discuss effective ways to boost the development of the local tourism and cultural sectors.

According to the Department, despite the negative effects of the global economic difficulties and China’s illegal placement of the HD-981 oil drilling rig in Viet Nam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, the city’s tourism sector has seen positive results.  This is mainly attributable to the effective implementation of various local tourism promotion programmes over recent months.  Most notably and perhaps surprisingly, the number of Chinese visitors is expected to be double last year’s figure.  In addition, domestic and foreign tourists’ average stay period in the city is now 2 days.