Over recent years, Da Nang’s tourism has maintained its average annual growth rate of over 20%.  It is the fact that, however, the average stay periods of visitors from both home and abroad, and their spending in the city are now still modest.

Kite surfing, a type of the city’s interesting water sports, is very attractive to visitors

According to the latest figures released by the city’s Tourism Department, visitor arrivals to the city in 2017 rose by 19% to hit 6.59 million, 4.8% higher than the year’s target.  In detail, about 2.29 million of them were foreigners, whilst the remainder were domestic visitors, up 36.8% and 11.3% against 2016 respectively.

Over last year, the city earned 16,544 trillion VND in revenue from tourism, contributing 23.72% to the city’s gross regional domestic product (GRDP).

Furthermore, employment involved in the tourism sector was created for 140,536 local job seekers, accounting for a high rate of the city’s total job opportunities.

According to the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), Viet Nam is seeing the low return rate as mere 6% of the foreign visitors usually return to the country, and Da Nang in particular, is no exception.

A recent survey on 1,000 foreign and 2,000 domestic visitors, and 100 travel agencies showed that the majority of interviewees were in the age-group of between 15 and 44. 

In detail, over 80% of the foreigners were first time visitors to the city, and mere 7% of them returned to the city for more than 3 occasions.  In contrast, 82% and 89% of visitors usually come back to Thailand and Singapore respectively. 

The average spending by the domestic and foreign visitors in the city was only over 2.7 million VND and 5.3 million VND per person over the average 3.6 and 3-day stay periods respectively.  Accordingly, domestic and foreign visitors spend an average of only 1.567 million VND and 1.029 million VND respectively.

Especially, over 70% of the interviewees’ spending was on accommodation, eating and drinking, and transport services, whilst the remainder was spent on entertainment and relaxation activities, plus other services.

In a similar vein, the Da Nang Statistics Office recently also conducted a survey on visitors’ general assessment of local attractions and tourism services, along with their satisfaction during their stay periods in the city. 

The survey showed that a large number of the respondents said they are pleased with Da Nang’s beautiful scenery, its friendly and hospitable residents, its good-quality tourism services and clean environment.  

Many of the interviewees, especially foreigners, however, pointed out to such shortcomings needing to be remedied as traffic congestions, pavement encroachment and a shortage of tour guides and other tourism personnel possessing foreign language proficiency. 

Another notorious issue is that, the city is still facing a shortage of night-time entertainment areas for locals and visitors.

In an attempt to address these matters of deep concern mentioned above, the city is striving to deploy new tourism projects as soon as possible.

To date, the city has attracted 83 projects totalling around 7.3 billion USD involved in tourism and services, 20 of which are foreign-invested ones with a total investment of nearly 1.3 billion USD.

Many local experts underlined the significance of fostering the progress of MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) tourism, which might generate high revenues to the tourism sector.  Special heed should be paid to developing human resources involved in the tourism possessing high qualifications, especially foreign language proficiency.

Five months ago, the municipal People’s Committee gave the go-ahead for setting up a ‘tourism quarter’ at the Suoi Da area, near the foot at the Son Tra Maintain, in Tho Quang Ward.

The new venue will feature basic functional areas, along with commercial, entertainment, and night-time shopping and cuisine areas, plus spas, karaoke bars. 

Once put into use, the ‘tourism quarter’ is expected to operate around the clock to serve domestic and foreign visitors to satisfy their growing demand.

Interestingly, the municipal Department of Transport also recently put into use a new 37km bus route featuring pick-up and drop-off points from the Da Nang International Airport to the Son Tra Peninsula.

A total of eight 45-seater high-quality buses are operating along the route, and all of them are equipped with air conditioning, and the fares are visually displayed on the buses. 

Buses operate daily on the route from 7.00am to 10.00pm.

Hopefully, given development strategies mentioned above, Da Nang’s tourism is likely to  to have even more success this year.