Building a wedding tourism brand.

Việt Nam•27/12/2023

Wedding tourism is becoming a popular trend among travelers. Seizing this opportunity, the city's tourism industry is striving to build a wedding tourism brand with the message "Where happiness begins" to complement Da Nang's existing tourism products.

The city's tourism industry is stepping up efforts to attract wedding tourism in the coming period. IN THE PHOTO: An outdoor wedding venue chosen by a client at Furama Resort Da Nang . Photo: Provided by Furama.

Many advantages make it an ideal wedding venue.

In early 2023, an Indian billionaire family chose Da Nang as the location for their child's wedding. The wedding party included 350 guests and over 100 event staff and chefs from India who came to serve the wedding for five days. Dr. Vo Huu Hoa, a lecturer at the School of Tourism (Duy Tan University), who participated in a survey on the potential of the Da Nang wedding tourism market, believes that the wedding tourism market will experience strong demand and growth in the near future. Service providers and intermediary businesses have also shown significant interest and developed strategies for this type of tourism. However, Da Nang still lacks specific regulations and policies to manage, promote, and develop the wedding tourism market.

According to Nguyen Duc Quynh, Chairman of the Da Nang Hotel Association, Da Nang has many ideal conditions suitable for couples to choose to hold wedding receptions, such as: large resorts with beautiful beaches, large banquet halls where guests can hold outdoor or indoor wedding receptions, many beautiful locations for wedding photoshoots, not to mention a team of chefs who regularly compete in national and international competitions. Therefore, in recent years, Da Nang has been chosen by many tourists as a wedding venue, including Vietnamese couples and couples from Japan, India, Australia, etc., with weddings ranging in size from 50 to nearly 1,000 people.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Cao Tri Dung, Chairman of the Tourism Association, believes that with its resources, service system, infrastructure, human resources, and landscape, Da Nang has many advantages for organizing weddings. The city is also considered an emerging tourist destination for weddings, and surveys conducted by the tourism industry show that Da Nang's most potential customers are from Asian countries, Australia, New Zealand, etc.

Da Nang has the necessary infrastructure, services, and human resources to attract the wedding tourism market. IN THE PHOTO: An outdoor wedding venue chosen by a client at Furama Resort Da Nang. (Photo: Provided by Furama)

Boosting promotion in potential markets.

To boost and attract wedding tourists, according to Mr. Nguyen Duc Quynh, the first step is to make Da Nang a popular wedding destination for Vietnamese people, creating competition with other domestic destinations. Then, to attract couples from abroad to hold their weddings in Da Nang, it is necessary to increase participation in wedding exhibitions in markets such as India and Shanghai (China), or participate in wedding exhibitions at major tourism promotion events such as in Berlin (Germany) and Australia, and to introduce Da Nang as a destination at specialized seminars with the participation of professional wedding organizers…

Mr. Cao Tri Dung added that in recent years, the Da Nang Tourism Association, the Department of Tourism, and the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Center have paid close attention to this new type of tourism and identified potential markets through surveys to develop appropriate promotional and marketing plans. Da Nang can form a wedding planning ecosystem from professional wedding organizers by showing them that the city has infrastructure and services that meet customer needs. The business community welcomes and participates deeply in the value chain serving wedding services; considering this a special product that contributes to developing Da Nang into an event city, as the city has positioned itself in recent years.

“The Tourism Association and the business community have planned to establish a thematic group of businesses with ecosystems serving weddings. This group will mobilize resources, along with state agencies and promotion agencies, to develop more unique products and packages bearing the Da Nang brand; and seek partners for in-depth cooperation such as airlines, wedding catering companies, and destination promotion agencies from abroad to deeply promote into potential markets. Da Nang is one of the leading localities in organizing wedding events. The business community proposes that city leaders research and announce specific policies to create favorable conditions for wedding companies, offering attractive incentives to attract customers…,” Mr. Cao Tri Dung suggested.

According to Nguyen Thi Hoai An, Director of the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Center, developing wedding tourism is one of the ideas that tourism professionals have long cherished, as part of a plan to diversify the market and expand into new tourist markets. Many couples have chosen Da Nang to hold their weddings in the past, but to turn it into a tourism product requires significant effort to develop the service ecosystem and build a brand for Da Nang as a wedding destination. Currently, the city's Tourism Promotion Center is drafting the Da Nang Wedding Tourism Development Plan 2024-2025 and pilot policies to attract wedding tourists, while also organizing more events related to wedding tourism such as wedding fashion shows. Conferences and seminars on wedding tourism... In the coming time, the center will strive to connect new flight routes to further attract the wedding tourism market, and the message "Where happiness begins" will be included in the communication and marketing plan for Da Nang as a wedding destination in the 2024-2025 period…

THU HA

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