Recently, many photo contests have been launched in Da Nang with the purpose of advertising the image of a friendly and hospitable city to visitors from both home and abroad.

A 'Joy of the Young' entry taken by Nguyen Xuan Duy

In particular, a photo competition entitled ‘Da Nang FantastiCity’ has been launched in the city by the municipal Department of Tourism.

The competition, which is running from 20 August to 2 October, is open to both Vietnamese and foreign photographers who have captured the beauty of Da Nang through their lens.

This is the second time the contest has been held by the Department after the first successful event in 2017.

The first 2 weeks after launching the contest, the organisers received 300 entries from 93 domestic and foreign photographers.

Each contestant can upload a maximum of 20 single photos to http://photo.danangfantasticity.com/. Entries are required to capture impressive and amazing moments from the daily lives of residents, customs, culture and cuisine, and municipal and international-level events and festivals in the city.

The contest’s organisers will collect the best photos on 29 October for the jury. The awards ceremony of the contest is scheduled to take place on 10 November.

The winner will receive a prize of 20 million VND (857 USD), whilst the runner-up will bag 10 million VND (428 USD), and two third place prizes will collect 5 million VND (214 USD) each.

The most outstanding photos will be chosen to print on publications of the municipal Department of Tourism.

In attempt to build Da Nang into a civilised and friendly city for visitors both at home and abroad, the municipal Department continues to launch a ‘Da Nang Smile’ campaign.

The campaign aims to appeal for all local residents to show their smiley faces, and their friendly and hospitable attitude and behaviour, towards visitors. Their practical action will help their city affirm its ‘Da Nang FantastiCity’ brand name.

The ‘Da Nang Smile’ campaign focuses on local government employees who are involved in customs, police, aviation and tourism sectors, plus staff at local restaurants and hotels, drivers, tour guides, and local residents.   

Since the start of this year, the Department has become actively involved in widely publicising the campaign amongst locals and visitors. Special attention has been paid to screening a clip about the campaign on the city’s official website, and one-stop-shop administrative areas, displaying banners about the campaign on local main streets and popular tourist sites, and publicising the ‘Da Nang Smile’ song.

In addition, since June, the Department has launched a photo contest themed ‘Smile of Tourism’ on the ‘Danang FantastiCity’ Fanpage at https://www.facebook.com/visitdanang.

Moreover, the Department will organise a talk to review the implementation of the ‘Smile of Da Nang’ campaign in order to collect opinions and exchange experience of relevant agencies in the organisation of the event.

Notably, the Department is implementing a ‘Each local resident is a tour guide’ project in Son Tra District. The agency will often conduct surveys of visitors about their levels of satisfaction with services in such key tourism districts as Son Tra, Ngu Hanh Son and Hai Chau.

Accordingly, awards will be given to outstanding individuals and organisations showing their friendly and hospitable attitude and behaviour towards visitors, whilst administrative fines will be imposed on those who show their polite attitude and friendly behaviour towards visitors.