VietNamNet Bridge – Authorities of the central coastal city of Danang now are busy launching road shows abroad to woo airlines to open services linking Danang with regional destinations to as to attract more tourists, said a local tourism official.

Customers ask for information at the Hapro Tourist Information Center at Danang International Airport. The city now is trying to woo more foreign visitors by opening flights to other Asian destinations.

In a tourism promotion program organized in Bangkok last week, Danang officials called for local and foreign airlines to open air services connecting the city with Bangkok.

Besides, it is seeking ways to re-open the Danang-Kuala Lumpur route as soon as possible, said Tran Chi Cuong, deputy director of the city’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Cuong informed that his department at the road show in Bangkok had introduced tourism services and had met representatives of several airlines there to encourage them to operate the Danang-Bangkok route. Both Vietnam’s VietJet Air and Thailand’s Bangkok Airways have shown strong interest in the service, saying the route is highly potential to their business.

“We are working with the sides concerned to speed up the scheme. The local tourism industry is looking to open the flight to Thailand as a major visitor-generating market of the city at the year-end,” Cuong told the Daily on Wednesday.

The local tourism industry and representatives of AirAsia are also working together to re-open the Danang-Kuala Lumpur route that has been suspended after a period of operation despite high demand from customer.

Danang will support the low-cost airline in promotion activities as well as in paying related airport fees to have the route back in service.

“As the possibility of re-opening the service is really high, we are looking forward to connecting the city with close Asian destinations to woo foreign visitors,” he remarked.

Danang welcomes a lot of scheduled and chartered flights carrying foreign visitors, with four scheduled services between the city and Singapore, South Korea’s Seoul, Cambodia’s Siem Reap and Hong Kong.

Furthermore, 10 other services from China using chartered planes have also brought a considerable number of travelers to Danang, making China a key visitor-generating market of the city.

In particular, many chartered flights with high frequencies could be developed into scheduled direct ones, comprising of those from Chinese provinces Guangzhou and Hangzhou.

“Tour operators serving visitors from the two Chinese provinces have talked with us about the possibility of turning the chartered flights into scheduled ones,” Cuong added.

The central city had welcomed a total of around 2.54 million visitors in January-September, rising 19.6% over the same period in 2012, with over 555,000 being foreign travelers, the tourism department reports.

Source: SGT