Based on the the highlights of the Da Nang Master Plan for its major future development, it can be imagined that the iconic Han River-side city plans to make more outstanding strides to become a worth living and worth visiting city in the region. So as to realize this ambition, it is high time for Da Nang to add highlight projects, high-class and impressive tourism products, and create its own brand to make itself stand out from other nationwide cities.

Mr. Nguyen Van Binh, Chairman of Sun Group's Central region branch proposes many constructive ideas for the sake of Da Nang future development.

The aforementioned statement was made by Mr. Nguyen Van Binh, Chairman of Sun Group's Central region branch. From the perspective of a businessman with a lot of experience in tourism development, Binh would like to propose some development solutions that may be useful for Da Nang to create its own brand, making it a worth visiting destination.

Firstly, it is a need to develop high-class marine tourism in Da Nang. Currently, Da Nang beach tourism is almost attached with only coastal resorts, swimming, popular games such as paragliding, jet skiing and scuba diving.

Actually, with the continuous development of science and technology, infinite human creativity, different experiences of discovery, entertainment and enjoyment at sea have appeared more and more in the world.

With a coastline of about 30km, located on international sea routes, Da Nang is naturally blessed with an array of favourable conditions for the development of high-class marine tourism, attracting tourists by sea.

Therefore, adding unique tourism, resort and entertainment experiences associated with the sea is a right way for Da Nang tourism to renew itself, raise its stature, and attract a stream of high-spending tourists.

Secondly, it is necessary to develop river tourism rich in identity. Next to the sea, the river is the "property" of Da Nang. Boasting nearly 50km of inland waterways, Da Nang should have developed many impressive river tourism products.

But over the past years, checking-in on famous bridges and taking rides onboard tourist boats to admire the nighttime city landscapes seem to be all about what river tourism offer to tourists in Da Nang.

One of the outstanding projects to refresh tourism is VND 400 billion project ‘River of Light’. It is expected that Phase 1 of the ‘River of light’ project that aims to transform the iconic Han River into a spectacular river of light will reach completion in the first quarter of 2024. Under this ambitious project, a cutting-edge light system will be installed along the river banks, between Song Han and Tran Thi Ly bridges, water surface section, as well as the bridges themselves spanning the river.

In addition, the rivers of Cu De, Cam Le, Tuy Loan, Co Co all run through Da Nang. Based on this fact, river tourism can completely be invested to become a feature of the city.

In particular, the 25km-long Co Co River connecting Da Nang to Quang Nam is being dredged, converging a lot of potential for river-based tourism development thanks to the connection value between tourist sites. 

It is known that the local administration is mulling over ways to spur up the development of inland waterway tourism. It is hoped that inland waterway tourism, exploiting the potential advantages of rivers, will soon be realised, creating a new and unique highlight for the central Vietnamese hub of tourism.

Thirdly, it is a good idea to light up the night-time economy. A city that takes tourism as a spearhead, aiming for an international stature, cannot be an ‘early sleeper’. The necessary conditions for the development of the night-time economy are mechanisms and policies. However, the sufficient condition is a specific plan.

Accordingly, it is necessary to develop night services at locations of sufficient scale, with a certain distance from residential areas, and with suitable infrastructure to easily create a diverse service chain. Those will be the complexes operating around the clock, serving all-in-one entertainment, shopping, culinary, financial, health care needs of visitors. They will also be places to organise professional and professional events, festivals, shows, and cultural and art programmes at night.

Fourthly, raising the brand as ‘Asia's leading destination for festivalsand events’ should be given a special heed. In order to become an event and festival destination of international stature, Da Nang needs to become the focus of large, monumental, attractive, even unique events.

After 3 years of absence due to the impact of COVID-19, this yea, the Da Nang International Fireworks Festival is on way to make much-qaited comeback with the hope of helping the city's tourism create a breakthrough. It is expected that the city will continue to promote the development of infrastructure to raise the brand name of this festival, and the brand ‘Asia's leading destination for festivals and events’ as a whole.

In addition, Da Nang also needs to attract investors to develop high-quality, inter-level and transnational healthcare and education chains, and at the same time create room to develop a high-class service and trade system, duty-free shops, large shopping centre. Da Nang needs to become an attractive and investment-worthy city to attract even more investors, entrepreneurs, commercial and financial units in the time to come.

To realise the above-mentioned constructive ideas, measures must be taken to step up the improvement of business investment environment as well as reform and simplify administrative procedures. At the same time, the city should seek ways to become a financial center. The development of the real estate market on a larger scale will also become an important driving force for the city to lure investment resources.

Reporting by THAO NHI  - Translating by A.THU