Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoai An, the Director of the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Center, and the center's experts have come up with many new ideas to promote the development of Da Nang’s tourism in order to grasping the urgency of developing smart tourism.

The Da Nang Tourism Promotion Center regularly organizes events to celebrate new flight connections with Da Nang, and welcome international visitors. IN PHOTO: Ms Nguyen Thi Hoai An (first, right) at a celebration event for resumption of scheduled international flights in March 2022. Photo: THU HA

Multilingual destination marketing

Hoai An stated that 9 years ago, we found it very easy to search for information about best places in the world to visit on content-rich websites that were beautiful and useful while it was difficult to attract viewers, especially travellers, to our websites for tourist attractions in Da Nang due to their monotonous designs as they only featured information about the city’s tourism policies. In their efforts to address these concerns, An and the center's experts have made great efforts to create the Da Nang Tourism Portal at https://danangfantasticity.com since 2015. The website possessing numerous useful features and languages has become the official channel for locals as well as tourists to search for tourism information.

The Da Nang Tourism Portal interface is currently translated into five languages, namely Vietnamese, English, South Korean, Japanese, Chinese. In particular, many articles introducing popular tourist attractions, news, events, tourism experiences in Da Nang along with a list of accommodation and food services in the city are being displayed on the website.

In order to improve the convenience for users, the center has made creative and prompt innovations in the Da Nang Tourism Portal to keep up with new trends in digital communication through promoting the use of social media platforms. Hence, the center's social networking sites has attracted and interacted with a relatively large number of both domestic and international visitors due to their diverse and rich content, plus beautiful designs.

In 2016, the city debuted a mobile application called ‘Danang FantastiCity’ which aims to provide visitors with useful tourism information about the city.

Developed by the municipal Tourism Promotion Centre and the city-based Gola Software Company, the application can be operated by either IOS or Android systems in both Vietnamese and English languages.

The application provides visitors with databases about the city’s attractive tours and its popular attractions, along with any on-going tourism programmes.  Other helpful information about the local weather and accommodation establishments is also displayed.

The application can help its users make detailed travel plans for their trip to the city.  In particular, if they select their travel dates, budget, and hobbies, the application will automatically suggest suitable travel schedules.  The schedules can be downloaded onto their smartphones, which allows them to be viewed later without wifi or 3G.

In particular, the new version of ‘Danang FantastiCity’ adds new outstanding features, including the ‘Event countdown’, which gathers all information about event headings, time and detailed schedules of each and every happening in the city, and the ‘E-coupon’- a promotion code used on mobile devices for hassle-free service order.

Besides, Da Nang has become a pioneer city in Viet Nam in creating a Chatbox in English and Vietnamese languages. The multilingual chatbot provides multiple language support to users and can interact with customers in multiple languages. The chatbot has been put into use since April 2018, and it has brought up a great deal of convenience to domestic and foreign tourists.

Inspiring tourists and travellers

Ms. Hoai An and the center's staff have exerted every effort to grasp and better understand the psychology of domestic and international tourists in a bid to make prompt innovations on the city’s tourism apps due to dramatic changes in the taste of travellers every year.

 “In the past, the focus was only on attending tourism fairs and distributing leaflets at these events to promote Da Nang’s tourism but destination marketing campaigns are now launched in both in-person and online forms. The center has made vivid videos to introduce them to its partners and attendees at these events in an attempt to gain greater attention for Da Nang destination”, said Ms. Hoai An.

In order to develop best promotional products, the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Center has sped up its digital transformation efforts in combination with using celebrities for Da Nang destination marketing.

The Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre has cooperated with Kloock, which once became the most-searched travel activities booking platform worldwide, to build a media campaign to market Da Nang destination.

Besides, vivid photos and videos to promote Da Nang as one of best places in Viet Nam to visit are available on many travel apps including Danang Fantasticity, Tiktok, and Youtube.

In 2019, Fayfay.com, a Hong-Kong-based e-commerce travel platform dedicated to local experiences in Viet Nam, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre to promote the city’s time-honoured history and culture, alongside its quality hospitality services, and authentic local tourism experiences.

Through the bilateral cooperative ties with Fayfay.com, Da Nang has till date reached more independent travellers, thereby helping marketing itself, and Viet Nam as a whole, by organizing joint tourism promotional events, roadshows, and media familiarization trips. The Center has also launched online booking system on its website at www.danangticket.com in the context of complex developments of the COVID-19 pandemic. In parallel with these activities, the city has organized tourism webinars to keep in touch and connect with potential partners in Singapore, South Korea, and India.

Da Nang has become the first place in Viet Nam to launch a Virtual Travel Fair with ‘Danang FantastiCity’ mobile app from March 17-25, 2022. The online event used virtual event platform to transport attendees in real-time 3D environment.

The initiative brought together leading domestic and international buyers and sellers as well as tourism products and experiences from over 160 virtual booths to provide travellers with attractive deals on holidays to Da Nang. Besides, the Virtual Trade Fair facilitated interactions between buyers and sellers while Online B2B Scheduling was available through the online event that allowed buyers to book appointments with sellers around the clock.

During the virtual event, the ‘Golden Hour Low Price’ program with great deals on tourism products was launched on March 19 and 20 from the midday to 2:00pm, and from 8:00pm to 10:00pm. The virtual event attracted a combined total of over 15,000 views while more than 500 connect appointments have been made between domestic tourism businesses. In addition, the event attracted more than 80 international buyers in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong (China). Furthermore, more than 1,800 tourism services/products were sold to domestic and international tourists during the ‘Golden Hour Low Price’ program.

In September 2022, the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre introduced an upgraded version of the ‘One touch to Da Nang’ application that enables visitors around the world to explore the city from home.

You can enjoy this fantastic virtual tour experience called ‘A Virtual Vacation in Da Nang’ at https://vr360.danangfantasticity.com/#tongquan_danang_1 where you can explore such attractions as the Ba Na Hills Resort, Mikazuki, and Nui Than Tai Hot Springs Park, as well as discover the beauty of the city at night. In addition, it provides 360-degree videos of Da Nang’s amazing tourism products such as paragliding in the Son Tra Peninsula and the Dragon Bridge fire and water show.

The updated version which uses virtual reality and 360-degree videos offers real-life accuracy and makes it easy for users around the world to access information about Da Nang’s tourism as well as enjoy a comprehensive experience. The city hopes that this amazing virtual tour to explore Da Nang will inspire your future trips with these virtual experiences and tours of some of the city's best natural and cultural spots.

In its first phase that lasted a year, the application attracted more than 18,000 visits.

Ms. Hoai An remarked that although the city’s budget for tourism and marketing is quite limited, high priority is given to making creative innovations in marketing strategies every year in an effort to make them a catalyst for both tourists and tourism businesses, contributing to inspiring and motivating domestic and international travellers to visit Da Nang.

Reporting by THU HA – Translating by H.L