MICE, which is an acronym for meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions, is a specific and unique form of group tourism where tourists attend various business events and leisure gatherings in their professional or individual capacity.

A group of foreign visitors attending a conference at the Furama Resort Danang

Recently, Da Nang has been considered as one of the localities having great potential for the development of MICE tourism.

According to a report released by the municipal Department of Tourism, recent years have witnessed the rapid growth of the tourism industry in the city.

Over the 2016 - 2018 period, the tourism sector welcomed a growing number of domestic and foreign visitors each year, showing an average annual growth rate of around 17.5%. Amongst, the average annual growth rate of foreign visitors to Da Nang was 30.9%. During that period, the average annual growth rate of turnover of the tourism sector was 28.4%.

At present, the city is home to around 828 accommodation establishments with a total of over 38,006 rooms available, an increase of 94 in establishments and 5,622 rooms against last year. 193 of them are 3 to 5-star hotels, offering a total of 23,389 accommodation rooms.

In addition, the accommodation establishments offer many types of conference and meeting rooms to satisfy the demand of large tourist groups.

Besides, Da Nang boasts a beautiful long coastline, its favourable position of being a gateway to the UNESCO-recognised world heritage sites in the central region, and its convenient transportation systems via roads, railways, airways, and waterways.

Also, the city has enough space for organising outdoor activities, and other MICE-related activities.

However, Vice Chairman of the municipal Hotels’ Association Nguyen Duc Quynh pointed out some challenges faced by the tourism industry during the MICE tourism progress.

In particular, there are few convention centres which can accommodate between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors. Another matter of concern is how to provide transportation services for thousands of guests.

Mr Quynh added the Ariyana Convention and Exhibition Centre (ADECC) to the south of the Furama Villas Danang has the country’s largest conference room which has been used to host major events, including the APEC Economic Leaders' Week 2017. He highlighted the importance of establishing the bilateral cooperation between Ariyana and travel companies in order to attract even more groups of visitors and MICE guests to the city.

Tourists participating in outdoor activities at the Tien Sa Beach

Mr Tran Tra, the Chairman of municipal Tour Guides’ Club, underlined the sgnificance of developing suitable tourism products for each tourist market, especially restaurants specialising in Hala food for visitors from India, and Middle Eastern countries, and spaces for Muslims to perform prayers.

Mr Huynh Duc Trung, the Head of Travel Management Office of the municipal Department of Tourism, said his agency would pay special attention to developing 3 main groups of tourism products: high-class sea and holiday tourism; shopping, conferences and seminars; and cultural, historical and ecological tourism.

Also, importance will be attached to diversifying support tourism products, boosting the development of MICE and beach holiday tourism, building many large-scale shopping centres, and exploiting business travellers.