Published:  13:08 Monday - February 18, 2013

The professionalism, not the big sum of money, will decide the success of tourism promotion programs.

Huynh Tan Vinh, Chair of the Da Nang Tourism Association, informed that 4-5 star hotels in the coastal areas of Da Nang and Hoi An have decided to join hands to establish the Da Nang 5-star Hotel Association, whose main function is to promote Da Nang’s sea tourism.

More than 10 hotels have joined the organization, though the membership fee is not low. Each of the members has to pay $6000 for the first year of membership, while the figure may be higher in the next years.

The Da Nang 5-star hotel Association would carry out in a professional way the promotion campaigns to introduce to travelers the great tourism potentials. Especially, the promotion programs would run independently with the programs to be launched by local authorities.

In fact, this is not a new model at all. Ten years ago, Paul Stone, who was then General Director of the 5-star Furama Da Nang, initiated the idea of setting up an organization in charge of managing and popularizing the brand “the Central Region’s culture heritage road.”

The idea was that travel firms and service providers contributed money to advertise the brand to the world. However, the scale of the organization was believed to be very big, and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), which did not well understand the model of such an organization, hesitated to recognize its legal status.

Analysts said that Paul Stone learnt an experience of German people when they tried to advertise the “Romantic Road” after the World War 2. The romantic road had the length of 328 kilometers, going across a lot of cities in the western part of Germany. 

A lot of cities, enterprises then contributed money to advertise the road and exploit the road that they joined forces to build up and introduce to travelers.

The German idea was that they would not force travelers to travel hundreds of kilometers just to visit an ancient town or a famous castle. The road was built up in a way to reappear a historical story with the links with culture, traditions and festivals. 

With a very professional advertisement campaign, the tourism road has become a very well-known brand in Europe over the last half a century.

With the cooperation, German had had more than enough money to use marketing tools in all means of transport and post ad pieces on TV channels all over the world.

As for Vietnam’s “the central heritage road,” there has been no strategic and reasonable advertisement and exploitation plan of the road so far. The principle “every man for himself” has cut the “tourism resources” into small pieces. Meanwhile, travelers have got puzzled because they don’t know what to choose when there are too many choices.

Sea tourism products have been competing with cultural heritages, while ancient urban areas have been competing with modern amusement parks in attracting tourists.

A report showed that the number of tourists arriving in the Da Nang airport increases by 200 percent every year, which is really good news for Da Nang City and Hoi An ancient town, but it brings worries to Hue City.

The ancient capital city of Hue has to compete fiercely with Phong Nha – Ke Bang natural heritage, while Da Nang City, with modern infrastructure and good conditions for relaxing and entertainment has emerged as a redoubtable rival to neighboring areas.

Vinh emphasized that it is necessary for the newly set up association to create a tourism map – a branded goods for Da Nang beaches.

DNSG