Promotion and advertising are now playing a vital role in developing Da Nang’s tourism sector. 

Staff from a local business introducing their products via a tablet at the 2016 Beach Leisure & MICE Travel Mart in June

In addition to organising the usual famtrips and tourism fairs, the city is taking advantage of e-marketing to connect local tourism service providers with potential visitors from both home and abroad.  Also, the majority of the city’s travel agencies, accommodation establishments, and restaurants have developed their own websites to advertise their services.

The Director of the Viet Da Travel Company, Mr Dinh Van Loc, said that e-marketing is one of the most effective ways to advertise tourism services, and it helps the businesses involved to save a lot of money.  The use of such marketing is now an inevitable trend since increasing numbers of visitors access the Internet to find useful information about their future destinations.

Mr Loc suggested that free training courses on e-marketing should be organised for local tourism businesses in order to help them ensure the efficiency of such activity.

The Deputy Director of the municipal Department of Tourism, Mr Nguyen Xuan Binh, remarked that e-marketing should focus on young people because they are more proficient at using the Internet and smartphones to find information than the elderly are.  He underlined the need for the city to develop an application which features reliable tourism information, and offers good interaction between local attractions and visitors. 

Mr Binh added, “The EU-funded capacity development programme for environmentally and socially responsible tourism in Viet Nam has already built a website to help promote tourism in the central coast region, focusing on the Thua Thien-Hue and Quang Nam provinces and Da Nang.  The website is being managed by the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre.  In the near future, the 3 localities will jointly organise online communication sessions and develop their shared fanpage to advertise their local tourism products”.

The Acting Director of the city’s Tourism Promotion Centre, Ms Nguyen Thi Hoai An, said “In addition to a mobile application called ‘Danang FantastiCity’, which has recently debuted in the city to provide visitors with useful local tourist information, the city is advertising its tourism services via various channels.  Included are the popular social networks and the local official tourism website http://tourism.danang.vn.  This website has recently been changed into a more eye-catching and friendly interface to better facilitate users’ access.  In addition, it boasts various new useful functions, including Facebook live to allow users to connect with local tourist support centres and have their questions about local tourism answered”.

Ms An revealed that, according to the latest statistics released by Google analytics, the city’s official tourism website is amongst the most important keywords searched on Google.  Thanks to this, it welcomes an average of between 18,000 and 20,000 users every month, with the highest users coming from Viet Nam, followed by Singapore, the USA, and Japan.