Da Nang’s leaders have praised the tourism industry for its significant contribution to overall economic growth in the city at a recent meeting to review the city's tourism performance in the first nine months of 2023, and identify tasks for the sector for the rest of the year and 2024.

South Koreans visiting the Ba Na Hills

Da Nang continues to identify its tourism industry as the brightest economic spot in the city, and a driving force of economic growth in the city in the coming years. Therefore, high priority will be given to boosting tourism industry with a focus on renewing experiences and products to adapt to changing traveller behaviour and trends in a bid to meet their high expectations, as well as diversifying tourism source market.

Tourism is an important spearhead industry for the city’s economic growth, and it is often dubbed the "smokeless industry". Strong recovery of Da Nang’s tourism industry in the first nine months of the year showed encouraging signs as the city’s economy has not yet returned to its pre-pandemic level. In recent years, the city's tourism industry has emerged as a bright economic spot with positive signs of recovery in terms of tourist arrivals and tourism revenue.

Specifically, the number of visitor arrivals at tourist accommodation establishment was estimated at 5.8 million in the first 9 months of 2023, an increase of 134.8% over the same period last year. Of total arrivals so far this year, foreign tourists accounted for more than 1.6 million, up 269.6 %, while domestic visitors were an estimated 4.2 million were, up 105.6%.

Revenue of the accommodation, food and travel services sectors in Da Nang was estimated at more than VND 21,123 billion, an increase of 49.7% over the same period in 2022, in which, revenue of accommodation and travel services sector was estimated at more than VND 11,351 billion, up 84%.

Da Nang witnessed a very high proportion of individual tourists who accounted for about 80% of the city’s total visitor arrivals while those traveling with a tour group operated by domestic tour operators only accounted for 15-20%.

Tourist arrivals in Da Nang continues to recover, with South Koreans leading the way and reaffirming their top spot with the largest market share. So far this year, South Korea has ranked number one in terms of visitor arrivals to Da Nang with 770,211, or 48.1% of the city’s total number of arrivals.

Meanwhile, visitor arrivals from Thailand ranked second in terms of market share with 147,724 arrivals, or 9.2% of total arrivals.

In third place was Taiwan (China) with 123,936 arrivals, or 7. 7% of total arrivals, followed by the US with 74,503 arrivals, or 4.7%, India with 67,456, or 4.2%.

The Municipal Travel and Tourism Strategy aims to welcome 2.5 million international visitors in 2024 and 2.8 million overseas arrivals by 2025. These targets pose a big challenge to the city's tourism industry, and greater efforts should be made with more specific steps required to take in an attempt to achieve the targets the city has set.

The municipal administration has issued a project to boost the tourism industry to 2030, with a vision to 2045 with a focus on generating breakthrough solutions, and creating pilot projects. Included are tourism development linked to agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture in Hoa Vang District with the aim of creating community-based, ecological, farm and rural tourism. Special attention is also paid to launching destination marketing campaigns in such source markets as India, South Korea, the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, and Singapore in an effort to promote Da Nang as an attractive tourist destination.

The most prudent strategy to attract domestic and foreign travellers to Da Nang would be to focus on creating new tourism products to develop unique experiences that travellers at both home and abroad cannot find elsewhere.

Besides, heed should be paid to improving the quality of tour guiding as the importance of tour guides in the tourism industry stems from their direct interaction with tourists, and the fact that they spend more time with them than other employees in the same profession. A tour guide has responsible for guiding tourists during tours or sightseeing. Tour guides accompany visitors, individual tourists, or groups of tourists during their vacation to interpret historical, cultural, and natural sights in the visitor's language in an interesting way, explaining aspects of the local culture. Therefore, a guide must have an effective combination of enthusiasm, knowledge, personality qualities, and high standards of conduct and ethics. Qualified tour guides will help Da Nang to make it a more desirable tourist destination, as well as increase the number of visitor arrivals and tourism revenue.

Furthermore, the city should give top priority to making it a safe and welcoming destination for travellers. Local communities’ attitude directly affects the tourism industry development in Da Nang. Community positive attitudes will encourage tourists’ satisfaction levels and contributes to the word-of-mouth promotion among them. Therefore, the involvement and the participation of the local community are pertinent towards the success of the city’s tourism development plan.

It is a clear statement that the role of the residence is necessary to support tourism development and maintain its robust growth. Often considered as an essential part of tourism, the local community plays multiple roles in tourism and is impacted by tourism in a variety of ways. By acting as service providers, sellers, craftspeople, and others, members of the Da Nang community perform a number of roles as they in- teract with tourists Therefore, the welcoming and positive attitude of members of the Da Nang community, including residents, sellers, hospitality staff, towards tourists plays an important role in supporting the development of the city’s tourism industry and attracting more visiors.

Besides the unique landscape, Da Nang also features other interesting things that cannot be found anywhere else in Viet Nam. The landscape of Da Nang is one of its unique features.

Da Nang is home to many stunning white sand beaches in beautiful locations that are easily accessible to travelers. In addition, the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture is one of the first museums built in Viet Nam by the French. The main building was constructed in 1915. It evokes some motifs of French colonial architecture in the early twentieth century and resembles the image of the Champa temples - towers in Central Viet Nam. Boasting over 100 years of preserving and bringing into play cultural values, the Museum of Cham Sculpture is considered to be a unique place showcasing the quintessence of Cham people’s art of sculpture, which is a precious heritage of Da Nang, and Viet Nam as a whole.

Hence, tourists are deeply impressed with the city’s beautiful tourist attractions and its amazing landscape. To make it a shopping and street food paradise in Viet Nam, Da Nang should focus on creating new and unique tourism products to surprise and delight visitors in addition to providing best, friendliest possible tourism and travel-related services to visitors to increase their satisfation.

Especially, Da Nang is known by the beautiful Han River that runs through it. Therefore, capital investment in the city's Han River- based tourism products is vital to maintaining a unique and attractive visitor offer.

Moreover, Da Nang is regarded as the top Vietnamese city for coffee lovers. Hence, special attention should be paid to conducting appropriate promotion of Da Nang’s coffee to make the city more inviting to visitors.

It is high time for Da Nang to take the most effective ways to refresh its tourism in a bid to make it truly a place worth visiting in Viet Nam.

Reporting by NHA DAN – Translating by H.L