To create attractive tourism highlight, the city’s tourism industry eyes to develop professional wedding tourism products. With the highly-meaningful message ‘Da Nang - The origin of happiness’, Da Nang will be the ideal starting point for couples to start a new journey in life. It is believed that there need to be specific requirements and criteria to develop this specific type of tourism.

Here is a scene of a wedding party held at the Furama Da Nang resort. Photo: THU HA

New wedding destination with many advantages

Recently, an international travel famtrip group of 20 professional wedding event organisers from major Indian cities including Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and from Bangkok, Thailand came to Da Nang to make surveys on programmes, services, and tourists attractions in the city.

International tourism and service businesses highly appreciate the wedding tourism destination of Da Nang because it possesses many advantages that can develop this type of tourism.

Ms. Yashita Lalpuria, a representative of the 7 Vachan Company, specialising in hotel and wedding services in India, assessed that Da Nang has a long coastline and resorts suitable for luxury wedding parties. Therefore, in the coming time, she will spend time meeting with domestic partners with a hope to bring many couples to the city to get married and travel here.

Ms. Lalpuria also suggested that the Da Nang government improve a number of services to better meet the needs of the wedding service industry such as visa issues and staff being fluent in foreign languages. Besides, it is a need to have special policies to attract customers.

Meanwhile, according to Ms. Lisa Viegas, the Director of the Destination Wedding Planners Congress (DWP Congress), there is currently a trend of couples currently prefers to apply technology to their wedding activities such as AI apps in design, QR codes and drone photography. Events are increasingly personalised to express originality, individuality and difference in weddings. Along with that, many couples aim for environmentally-friendly weddings or small, intimate celebrations that are private and not go public. Da Nang's resorts and hotels should pay more attention to these trends in order to have promotional solutions to businesses and organisations, thereby increasing choices for couples.

As one of the hotels frequently chosen by couples to hold their wedding parties, Sheraton Grand Danang Resort & Convention Center has always strived to become a leading wedding venue with classy infrastructure, impressive beauty and the most enthusiastic hospitality. This will contribute to promoting the Da Nang destination and strengthening the brand’s presence in the wedding segment, giving couples the most memorable experiences.

Many preferential policies to attract wedding tourists

Chairman of the Da Nang Tourism Association Cao Tri Dung said that wedding tourism is one of Da Nang’s main products in the coming time, so the city's tourism industry always creates favourable conditions to support the promotion of these services and products to key wedding tourism markets.

Meanwhile, according to Chairman of the Da Nang Hotel Association Nguyen Duc Quynh, the city houses many ideal resorts and hotels suitable the organisation of weddings and businesses can provide many different wedding models to meet the needs of couples choosing Da Nang as their dream destination no matter how far away.

As assessed by Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism Nguyen Thi Hoai An, wedding tourism is a potential niche market, and Da Nang has certain advantages for developing itself into an attractive wedding tourism destination. Therefore, the city's tourism industry has researched, surveyed and evaluated the market potential as well as Da Nang's ability to respond to the wedding tourism sector.

At the same time, the city has gradually approached customers and wedding service providers to build a customer database in the key Indian market.

To develop a professional wedding destination, the city will strengthen cooperation with professional associations in training wedding tourism human resources, fostering and improving professional qualifications, event organisation, and culinary processing, especially Indian cuisine.

Also, another task is to supplement knowledge about Da Nang's culture and history, and foreign language training for tour guides.

Heed will also be paid to promoting the application of modern wedding technologies suitable to the needs and tastes of the market, building a community of wedding tourism businesses and connect with neighbouring localities to develop unique service products and tours that suit the tastes of wedding tourists.

In addition, the city will encourage cooperation and economic linkages between hotel, travel and tourism businesses in Da Nang with the central regional localities to form large-scale, brand-name businesses participating more deeply in the global tourism chain.

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoai An, in addition to the Indian target market, the city's tourism industry also targets the Northeast Asian market (China, South Korea, Japan) and couples who are overseas Vietnamese, couples with a foreign bride or groom.

In the domestic market, the city also focuses on customer groups that are high-income couples, celebrities and markets with direct flights such as Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Da Nang is the pioneer locality in Da Nang to promulgate and apply a pilot programme to attract wedding tourists to Da Nang. In the first five months of the year, the city’s tourism industry consulted and applied the programme to 26 couples organising wedding tourism in Da Nang and received high appreciation from the couples.

The city also has preferential rates for weddings with the number of guests and the number of room nights that meet the accompanying conditions.

There are incentives depending on the number of guests such as displaying welcome information at the airport, fresh flowers welcoming the bride and groom, welcome hashtag boards at the airport or hotel with the bride and groom's names, Da Nang wedding tourism slogan and wedding tourism identification products, free tickets to experience services at local attractions, traditional art performances, experiencing Da Nang tour by cyclo for a group of 10 people, one night of wedding room at a 5-star hotel.

Reporting by THU HA - Translating by A.THU