Da Nang boasts beautiful mountains, romantic rivers, clean beaches and many islets. In addition, some upstream parts of the Co Co, Vinh Dien and Cam Le rivers in the city are promising venues for developing eco-tourism.

A tourist boat operating on the Han River

However, the city has yet to tap its full potential for developing community-based eco-tourism, especially waterway tourism. The main reason is thought to be that existing tourism products are quite monotonous, and there are no new tours and waterway routes to satisfy the increasing demand of visitors.

Mr Nguyen Quoc Duy, Deputy Director of the Dong Vinh Thinh company which operates the Tau Rong Song Han, remarked that there are now only 3 inland waterway transportation routes on the Han River. All of them depart and arrive at the former Han River Port. The routes are the Port - Tran Thi Ly Bridge - the Port, the Port - Thuan Phuoc Bridge - Son Tra Peninsula - the Port, and the Port - Thuan Phuoc Bridge - Sung Co Beach - Ngoc (Ruby) Islet (Hon Chao) - the Port.

The 1^st route operates from 7.30am to 10.30pm from Mondays to Fridays, ending at 11.00pm on weekends and public holidays, whilst the remaining ones run daily from 7.30am to 5.30pm. These transport routes only use vessels, with each accommodating between 50 and 250 passengers. Meanwhile, the number of boats carrying less than 50 passengers is higher than the required ones.

Another challenge is that sightseeing boats which are allowed to operate on the Port - the mouth of the Han River - Son Tra Peninsula route are required to accommodate between 30 and 250 passengers and meet the first-class inland waterway engineering standard.

Some waterway tour providers asked the city authorities to lift restrictions on the number of passengers onboard and operating time of their boats because their services meet the city’s regulations and standards in a bid to promote the development of river boat tours, and make the waterway tourism more inviting to visitors.

A representative from the Da Nang Waterway Tourism Chapter also suggested that the city authorities should build more tourist boat piers and wharves for boosting the development of the river tourism sector.