The Da Nang Department of Tourism held a workshop on Wednesday to gather opinions from experts and consultants on the draft plan for developing cuisine into the city’s unique tourism product.

The draft plan aims to diversify and form a system of tourism products in a bid to lure more domestic and international tourists to Da Nang in the coming time. This greatly contributes to building the brand and image of the city’s tourist destinations, promoting economic development, generating revenue and effectively exploiting the value chains, and preserving and enhancing the exchange of cultural values to tourists.

According to the Department of Tourism, there are now more than 4,000 dining establishments and 200 restaurants in the city. Of which, over 2,000 small and medium-sized ones specialise in serving dishes of all regions of Viet Nam.

The dishes in Da Nang are quite diverse from local specialties to international dishes. The international dishes mainly serve traditional international tourist markets such as South Korea, China, Japan, and Thailand.

Dishes serving Indian or Muslim guests are not significant and have not yet attracted tourists in general.

Restaurants in the affordable and mid-range segment can meet the needs of tourists, but the city lacks high-end dining establishments.

During the workshop, tourism experts, and representatives of associations and units stressed the need for the city to identify cuisine as an important tourism product for Da Nang, the actual situation of exploiting the culinary business in the city, and the basis for orienting the development of cuisine into tourism products.

Importance should be attached to clarifying the meaning of ‘standard’, local cuisine and street food; orienting the development of Da Nang products in terms of groups, segments and standards; developing human resources for restaurants and food service providers, and proposing mechanisms and policies to develop human resource training.

Reporting by VAN HOANG - Translating by M.DUNG