Poor promotion and a lack of international-standard centres for sports, shopping, trade, night recreation and finance has hindered Danang becoming an attractive destination to international tourists.

Beach sports have started to flourish in Danang attracting locals and tourists alike.

Vice director of the city’s Culture, Sports and Tourism ministry, Nguyễn Hữu Chiến made the comments at the Spring Tourism Forum, which featured more than 200 travel agencies and hospitality businesses from Huế, Hội An and Đà Nẵng city yesterday.

Chiến said the rapid development of small size hotels in recent years, poor quality restaurants, hotels, and deficient skilled manpower in tourism have stopped the city’s tourism industry taking off.

"The city has developed 492 hotels, of which 80 are three and five-star hotels, providing 18,000 rooms," he said.

“We receive only a VNĐ2.4 billion (US$106,000) fund for hosting road-shows and tourism promotion programmes at fairs abroad each year. The sum covers our spending for only two events,” Chiến said.

Trần Trà, chairman of the city’s tourist guide club said the city has over 1,200 international guides (English speaking), with poor reviews from tourists from 2002-13.

Deputy director of Việt Nam Tourism joint-stock company (Vitours) Lê Tấn Thanh Tùng said hotels in the city use about 51 per cent of their capacity annually, while three star hotels just reach 25 per cent.

He said three star hotels are priced poorly during the low season (between September and February).

Tùng suggested the city should offer favourable conditions including promotion programmes for event organisers hosting international conferences and meetings and exhibitions during the low season.

He said poor quality of manpower was the tourism industry’s Achilles’ heel.

“Training centres just supply only 55 per cent for the tourism, while a lack of personnel managers, supervisors, marketing and product promotion directors are also major challenges,” Tùng said.

Deputy general manager of five-star Furama Đà Nẵng Resort, Nguyễn Đức Quỳnh said Đà Nẵng’s seafood had not been advertised effectively to tourists.

 He said poor quality service and poor hygiene at some restaurants  and hotels was still out of control, while restaurants have little variety on their menus.

Quỳnh said food in the city should be an art, not only food.

He suggested the city needs support for a series of restaurant and cuisine introductions in countries that Đà Nẵng has direct flights from including South Korea, Japan and China.    

Vice chairman of the city’s people’s committee, Đặng Việt Dũng said the tourism industry had significant development last year with 4.6 million tourists visiting, including 1.25 million foreigners, a 25 per cent increase year-on-year,” he said.

He said the city also attracted 75 tourism sector projects that invested $8.7 billion, of which $1.7 billion were from 15 foreign direct investment projects.

The central city plans to launch direct flights from Đà Nẵng Airport to Osaka in Japan and Seoul in Korea to attract investment from those two nations.

 VNS