Recent years have seen a growing number of visitors to Da Nang for travelling.

Visitors to the Ba Na Hills

In particular, over the first 3 months of this year, the seaside city welcomed a total of over 1.2 million visitors, up 27% compared with the same period last year. Of this figure, the number of foreigners went up by 37.1% to hit around 856,382, whilst that of domestic visitors rose by 8% to nearly 359,569.

The impressive figures can be mainly attributed to the city’s safe and clean tourism environment, and its diverse natural landscape. In addition, the prices of goods and services are still stable and there are various prices for different services.

However, according to a research about the contribution of the tourism sector to the city's socio-economic development conducted by the municipal Department of Tourism, the number of international tourists to the city for the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th times respectively accounted for 81.1%, 18.9%, 3% and 4% of the total.

Meanwhile, the number of domestic visitors to the city for the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th times made up 23.2%, 10.6% and 24.2% respectively.

Mr Doan Hai Dang, Director of the city’s branch of Vietravel, said over the past years, the tourism sector has been striving to develop new and attractive tourism products in an effort to attract even more visitors to the city. Most notable amongst popular tourism products is the Cau Vang (Golden Bridge) at the Thien Thai Garden in the Ba Na Hills.

He, however, pointed out that the spending of visitors in Viet Nam has been an average of 96 USD a day, whilst their spending in Singapore has amounted to 300USD and 500USD a day in Singapore and Dubai respectively.

Mr Dang stressed the need for the city to develop even more new and unique tourism products in order to stimulate both domestic and foreign visitors to spend even more money in the city, as well as encourage them to extend their stay periods and return later.

“In addition to regular tourism products, more unique ones should be developed like the annual Da Nang International Fireworks Festival to make Da Nang more inviting to visitors”, he suggested.

Mr Cao Tri Dung, the Chairman of the municipal Travel Association, affirmed the city’s maritime tourism potential has yet to be fully tapped. In particular, a wide range of water and underwater sports should be developed. Included are swimming, windsurfing, jet skiing, boating, diving to explore the coral reefs and walking under the sea.

Deputy Director of the municipal Tourism Department Truong Thi Hong Hanh unveiled her agency planned to give suggestions to the municipal government about the establishment of tourism services by sea at the Son Tra Peninsula, and the development of new tourism products at beaches.

“Importance would be attached to upgrading tourist sites on the peninsula, and appealing for investment from both home and abroad into tourism projects matching with the city’s general development orientations”, she remarked.