Currently, South Korean and Chinese nationals are taking the lead in foreign visitor arrivals to Da Nang.
Between 2013 and 2017, South Korean arrivals rose by 16 times from 55,000 in 2013 to over 900,000 in 2017. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Japanese tourist markets maintained a stable growth during that period.
Mr Nguyen Nhu Nam, the General Director of the Viet Nam Travel Mart Joint Stock Company, explained that the reason for the significant increase of South Korea and Chinese arrivals is that over recent years the city has seen an upward trend in the number of so-called zero-dong tours, mostly applied to the Chinese and South Korean tourists.
“The growing such tours bring problems rather than benefits for the city as they have resulted in the unfair competitive environment between travel businesses, the low quality of tourism services, the uncontrolled extensive operation of unlicensed foreign tour guides who spread distorted information about the truth of Viet Nam’s history and its culture, and the tax evasion by some shops”, he added.
Mr Nam, therefore, highlighted the importance of exploiting the city’s new international tourist markets in order to reduce its dependence on its traditional ones.
According to Ms Huynh Thi Huong Lan, Deputy Director of the city’s Tourism Promotion Centre, remarked in addition to visitors from South Korea, China and Japan, Da Nang has welcomed a large number of tourists from the USA, Australia and such European nations as the UK and France.
She added India is also a very potential tourist market, but the city has yet to fully tap this market. Hence, the number of Indian visitors has been still modest.
In particular, only 4,963 Indian people visited the city between January and August, accounting for only 0.23% of the total international visitor arrivals.
Ms Lan explained the reason that there is no non-stop flights connecting Da Nang with India, and local tourism businesses are facing some difficulties in organising tourism promotion activities in the country due to high costs.
Also, the city is facing a shortage of new and special tourism products, and tourism support services. In addition, there is a lack of special services for Indian guests, as well as for foreigners in high-end segments.
Mr Ngo Quang Vinh, Director of the municipal Tourism Department, said the city targets to welcome 8.9 million visitors by 2020, including 3.6 million foreigners with the annual growth rate of 18.3%.
In addition, the city sets a goal for increasing the proportion of potential international tourist markets such as the USA, Australia, India and European countries to 15% by 2021 from 6.57% in 2017.
In a bid to exploit visitors from such markets, the local authorities will work with international airlines to open the Da Nang-Melbourne non-stop flights, and with Qatar Airways to organise tourism promotion activities in the Europe and the North America.
Heed will be paid to welcoming groups of international farmtrip and international presstrip which want to survey and write articles about the local attractions and its tourism products.
Importance will be paid to developing more special tourism products for European visitors, and promoting the development of MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) tourism.
Source: Da Nang today