The restart of M.I.C.E (Meetings-Incentives-Conferences-Exhibitions) trips to Da Nang since early this month has promised to be a major driver for a strong rebound of Da Nang tourism industry for the remainder of 2020 - a very tough year witnessing the rage of coronavirus outbreaks and natural disasters.

A scene of an event to introduce tourism products at the Hai Chau District-based Grand Mercure Danang Hotel

Handful of great deals on M.I.C.E tours are being introduced to businesses nationwide in a bid to fully tap the potential of this lucrative segment.

M.I.C.E is a specific and unique form of group tourism where tourists attend various business events and leisure gatherings in their professional or individual capacity. The majority of M.I.C.E tour bookers are businesspeople who want to combine organising conferences or seminars with travelling. Based on these facts, it can bring in much higher revenue for the city than the other types of tourism because it attracts a large number of high-spending visitors.

Encouragingly, many companies nationwide now have the tendency for organising M.I.C.E tours for their employees before the year’s end.

From 6 -8 November, the staff of the city-based Long Thien Anh Company Limited were quite busy handling Da Nang tours for about 600 tourists from Northern Viet Nam.

Mr Nguyen Le Thanh Nhan, a freelance tour guide, who was in charge of guiding these visitors expressed his great joy and happiness to see the tourism industry showing signs of recovery from Covid-19. He said, if there were no tours, he and other tour guides would find other livelihoods to make ends meet.

A group of visitors from Ha Noi arriving in Da Nang for a year-end event

In a similar vein, other travel agencies also welcomed large groups of M.I.C.E tourists as the Huong Duong International Travel JSC with 300 guests, Vu Son Tung Service Company Limited with 100 guests.

According to revelations by Director of the Da Nang Department of Tourism Truong Thi Hong Hanh, the M.I.C.E tourism stimulus package is still valid from this month into late December, targeting businesses and agencies nationwide.

Besides, the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Fund (DTPF) will partner with the International Association of Golf Tour Operators, and golf clubs in Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, to organise periodic golf events, as well as offer an excellent range of membership packages, in order to increase golfer numbers in the city.

In addition, the staycation package, which is a really interesting way to ‘scratch travel itch’ by staying close to home rather than travelling to faraway places, are offering a series of cheap attractive tours and services for domestic visitors.

Also remarkably, Da Nang industry will be vibrant with the debut of a tourism stimulus programme to welcome in the New Year 2021, which is slated to be launched in the city late this month.

These attractive tourism stimulus packages will be introduced at the Viet Nam International Travel Mart (VITM), which is due to take place Ha Noi from 18 -21 November.

By THU HA  - Translated by A.T