Domestic and foreign media are looking at Da Nang with admiration and expectations as the city has been named as the most liveable city in Viet Nam, a beautiful place that look like Singapore, and more. The past decade was considered as the golden period of the city’s tourism as the city has received countless international awards.

Da Nang is attracting tourists from far and wide with bookings soaring for this summer. Photo: ST

In 2022 alone, Da Nang was honoured with international prestigious titles, including ‘Asia's Leading Festival and Event Destination 2022’ awarded by World Travel Awards; the 21^st position in the list of 25 most popular tourist destinations in Asia voted by Tripadvisor; one of 10 best cities in Southeast Asia voted by New York-based Travel & Leisure Magazine. Recently, Booking.com has unveiled that Da Nang on a par with Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, has been named among the most visited destination by Vietnamese tourists. Hence, Da Nang has been able to deliver unbelievable results in its tourism industry.

Da Nang has emerged as one of the hottest travel destinations this summer. The city is attracting tourists from far and wide, with bookings soaring for summer months. The attractiveness of the city is mainly attributed to a series of world-class events during this summer. Most notably, the Da Nang International Fireworks Festival 2023 attracted a large number of tourists at both home and abroad.

Data provided by the Da Nang Statistics Department showed that the city saw an increase of 95.6% over the same period in 2022 in the number of tourist arrivals to reach more than 700,000, in May 2023. In which, international visitor arrivals in the city were estimated at over 169,000. In particular, the number of visitor arrivals at tourist accommodation establishment was more than 2.8 million in the first 5 months of 2023, 3.1 times more than in the corresponding period of 2022.

In fact, Da Nang has recorded vertical growth in its tourism industry not only in recent years, but also in more than a decade ago. For the first time ever, Da Nang has set a target in 2016 to attract more than 5 million tourist arrivals.

However, in the first 9 months of 2016, tourist arrivals in the city reached 4.5 million, a 18.3% rise compared with the previous year. It is quite interesting that Da Nang has maintained such a high growth rate of tourist arrivals in following years. Most notably, nearly 8.6 million tourist arrivals were recorded in 2019, of whom, 3.5 million were foreigners. For the first time in history, Da Nang has welcomed a such high number of international arrivals.

The Politburo’s Resolution No. 33 on the construction and development of Da Nang during the process of industrialization and modernization in Viet Nam, identified the tourism industry as Da Nang’s key economic sector, as well as identified Da Nang as a tourism hub of the country.

In its efforts to achieve the above-mentioned goals, the Da Nang government has recently created tourism development strategy in Da Nang to 2030, with a vision to 2045. Under this strategy, by 2030, Da Nang will strive to become a hub for tourism and high-quality services, an innovative destination of Viet Nam and Southeast Asia. By 2045, the city will be named as the best place to visit in Asia.

It is clear that, Da Nang has developed its tourism development policy with a focus on promoting the development of the tourism industry at the regional and Asian level. Da Nang can use its subjective and objective factors to make it the top tourist destination in Asia. The city will adopt bold solutions in order to turn its goals into reality.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned goals, local residents have an important role to play in implementing the sustainable development goals for the tourism sector in addition to the determination of the city's leaders and efforts of the tourism industry itself.

Reporting by BUI THANH – Translating by H.L