From More Tourists to Better Tourism: Da Nang Conference Maps Vietnam’s Next Phase

DA NANG, VIETNAM. There was no shortage of good news in the ballroom at Furama Resort Danang on Thursday morning. Vietnam has welcomed 13.9 million international visitors in the first seven months of 2026, 13.8 per cent more than a year earlier, at a time when Thailand’s arrivals have slipped 3.2 per cent and Malaysia’s are flat. Vietnamese hotels lead the region on growth in occupancy, rate and revenue. Phu Quoc, Nha Trang and Da Nang are outperforming Bali, Phuket and the Maldives.

The conference, titled “Vietnam Tourism 2027: The Right Strategic Choices for Growth” and staged under the Horecfex Vietnam banner with the Vietnam Tourism Association and the Vietnam Hotel Association, nevertheless spent most of its four hours on what those arrivals figures leave out.

Where Vietnam Stands in the Region

Hannah Pearson, Director of the Singapore consultancy Pear Anderson, opened with a regional comparison. Vietnam’s arrivals have stayed consistently above 2019 levels. Thailand’s January to July total of 18.4 million was 20 per cent below 2019 and 3 per cent below last year, with Chinese arrivals still 54 per cent short of pre-pandemic volumes and the government reviving domestic travel subsidies. Malaysia, at 12.8 million in the first half, was broadly unchanged but has positioned itself as an alternative transit hub and will host the return of Formula One in October.

Vietnam’s growth is notably broad-based. National Statistics Office data for January to July show China at 3.1 million, or 22 per cent of the total, followed by South Korea at 2.4 million and Russia at 864,000, up 174 per cent and now the largest European source. Taiwan contributed 747,000 visitors, the United States 617,000 (up 18 per cent), Cambodia 565,000, India 553,000 (up 43 per cent), Japan 498,000, the Philippines 417,000 (up 64 per cent) and Australia 397,000 (up 23 per cent). Ms Pearson noted that airline capacity in the region remains tight after a difficult second quarter, and identified sustainability, wellness, adventure, events, digitalisation, dispersal beyond the most visited sites and market diversification as the themes most likely to shape the next phase. Vietnam’s central challenge, she suggested, had become one of value rather than volume.

The Hotel Data

Oxy Ong, Sales, Southeast Asia at STR (CoStar Group), presented half-year benchmarking that placed Vietnam at the top of Southeast Asia. Revenue per available room in US dollar terms rose 23.3 per cent year on year, compared with 11.8 per cent in Indonesia, 5.9 per cent in the Philippines, 4.0 per cent in Singapore and 1.0 per cent in Thailand, while Malaysia recorded a 0.2 per cent decline. Vietnam’s rolling twelve-month average daily rate has narrowed the gap with Thailand, and demand has outpaced supply in every month since January 2025, helped by visa liberalisation, new air links and a busier MICE calendar. Hanoi has overtaken other submarkets on occupancy.

Among resort destinations, Phu Quoc’s RevPAR grew 46 per cent, Nha Trang and Cam Ranh 44 per cent and Da Nang 14 per cent, against 13 per cent in Goa, 3 per cent in Bali and 1 per cent in the Maldives, with Phuket flat and Langkawi down 7 per cent. In Da Nang, January and March have emerged as new peak months, smoothing what was once a pronounced shoulder season, and rate growth has outpaced occupancy growth on every day of the week. The city’s business mix has shifted sharply: transient demand accounted for 50.5 per cent of rolling twelve-month occupancy in June 2026, up from 34.9 per cent two years earlier, while group business has declined from 19.6 per cent to 12.7 per cent.

The caveat was supply. STR’s pipeline chart for Da Nang shows close to 13,000 rooms under construction, in final planning or proposed, the largest figure in the series. “Future performance will increasingly depend on ADR growth and the market’s ability to convert demand into pricing power,” the presentation concluded.

Four New Measures of Competitiveness

Dang Manh Phuoc, Chief Executive Officer of The Outbox Company, argued that arrivals and receipts alone cannot tell a destination whether it is winning. Outbox’s estimates show Vietnam’s international arrivals rising 473 per cent and receipts 355 per cent between 2022 and 2025, both the fastest among five ASEAN destinations, yet value per arrival fell 20.6 per cent to about US$996, the steepest decline in the group. Thailand had already recovered to above its 2022 level on the same measure.

He proposed four metrics: value per tourist, destination brand strength, destination reputation and traveller experience. On brand strength, Outbox’s index scores Vietnam at 128.1 against a regional average of 147.4, behind Singapore at 156.1, Thailand at 151.3, Malaysia at 136.2 and Indonesia at 132.6. At city level, Ho Chi Minh City’s brand awareness scored 2.93 on a five-point scale, compared with 3.47 for Singapore and 3.43 for Bangkok. On experience, Vietnam’s 2025 net promoter score of 24.2 sat well below Singapore’s 59.2 and Thailand’s 53.2.

Outbox also cited the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Development Index 2024, in which Vietnam fell seven places to 59th of 119. Tourist service infrastructure ranked 80th, the socio-economic impact pillar 115th, and air transport infrastructure dropped 17 places. “A destination that doesn’t invest in tourism intelligence will sooner or later end up spending its marketing budget on assumptions, not data,” the presentation observed.

The National Direction to 2030

Do Cam Tho, Head of Planning and Finance at the Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism, described 2026 and 2027 as a hinge between recovery and a deeper phase of growth. VNAT’s 2030 aspiration is 45 to 50 million international arrivals, 160 million domestic trips and US$80 to 90 billion in total revenue, which would require compound growth of roughly 10 per cent a year in foreign arrivals; the statutory Tourism System Master Plan of 2024 set 35 million. International visitors currently spend an estimated US$1,200 to 1,400 per trip, and VNAT’s own assessment was that growth in numbers has “not created a commensurate increase in total receipts”.

For the trade, the operative parts of the plan are its market and product priorities. India and the Middle East are named as new priority markets alongside Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. Wellness and medical tourism, MICE and golf, shopping tourism, the night-time economy and premium coastal and cruise products are the designated higher-value product lines. The corridor linking Quang Tri, Hue and Da Nang is one of five driver regions earmarked for concentrated investment before 2030, with simplified visas, more direct international routes and large-scale private resort and entertainment complexes as the principal enablers.

What the Panel Said

The closing discussion, moderated by Nguyen Cao Son, Chairman of APC Corporation, opened with a comparison that many in the industry will recognise: the same traveller who buys a series-tour package in Da Nang for less than US$500 can be found a few hours’ flight away in Bali, paying US$1,000 a night and ordering champagne by the pool.

Cao Tri Dung, Chairman of the Da Nang Tourism Association, took issue with the idea that Da Nang is a low-value destination and described a decade-long rebalancing of its markets. In 2019, South Korea and China together accounted for roughly 2.7 million of Da Nang’s 3.5 million international arrivals. Today South Korea represents 27 to 28 per cent and China around 10 per cent, with a long tail of markets at 4 to 5 per cent each. The association’s plan for raising spend, he said, has four parts: continuing the shift from charter-driven series tours to independent travellers; making information and booking readily available on the platforms visitors use; bringing admission prices at public attractions, which he said still charge VND50,000 to 70,000 for world-class sites, closer to international norms; and completing a product ecosystem that runs from premium hotels and restaurants to shopping, evening entertainment and events. Da Nang’s first-half market mix, published by the city’s tourism promotion centre, lists South Korea at 20.6 per cent, China at 8.6, India at 6.7, the United States at 5.8, Taiwan at 5.5, Australia at 4.8, the United Kingdom at 4.5, Thailand at 3.9, Russia at 3.8 and Japan at 3.7.

Nguyen Duc Quynh, Chairman of the Da Nang Hotel Association, said the city’s early and disciplined coastal planning was its structural advantage and continued to draw international brands. Room supply is growing 15 to 20 per cent a year, he said, with four- and five-star occupancy at 90 to 94 per cent in peak periods and close to 10,000 rooms on the way. On distribution, he described dependence on online travel agencies, whose commissions approach 30 per cent in some markets, as a vulnerability, and urged hotels to use AI, social media and direct channels to regain control of their demand. He also made the case for promoting multi-destination itineraries across Vietnam’s provinces as a way of lengthening stays.

Dinh Trong Khoa, Director of Development, Vietnam, at IHG, said the group treats Vietnam and Thailand as its two priority development markets in Southeast Asia and has run a dedicated Vietnam entity since 2022 to pursue secondary cities, resorts and industrial locations. He cited the arrival of further luxury flags, including Mandarin Oriental, and recent visits by the Global Chief Executive Officers of Marriott and Accor as signs of international confidence. He identified two constraints: low awareness of Vietnam among long-haul travellers, and a shortage of products on which visitors can spend once they arrive. On the perennial question of international brand versus self-management, the moderator noted that distribution costs of 20 to 30 per cent, and at times higher during promotional campaigns, often exceed the fees charged by a management company.

Vu Cong, General Manager of Jandec Asia, which sells Vietnam to inbound partners in India and other markets, gave the session’s most concrete example of leakage. A 500-guest group in Phu Quoc for four days and three nights generated only about VND1.5 billion for his company, because the hotel, restaurants and event elements were contracted directly or through offshore channels, leaving the destination management company with transport and logistics. “We have the guests, but the money is not staying,” he said. His prescriptions were operational: always present a higher-value alternative alongside the requested option, and build product ecosystems that capture ancillary spend, such as the paid souvenir photo stations at Ba Na Hills, which add US$5 to 8 per visitor. He also argued that Vietnam’s reputation for value for money was an asset to be extended upward rather than discarded, noting that local hotel brands were delivering service he regarded as world-class.

Mr Phuoc of Outbox cautioned against both the Bali comparison and the Thailand comparison, pointing to differences in how arrivals are counted and in product models. He said Da Nang had gained more than any other Vietnamese destination from the 2025 merger with Quang Nam, which combined Da Nang’s Northeast Asian base with Hoi An’s long-haul Western markets and reduced concentration risk. He also argued that opening a new source market each year, or adding charter flights, does not by itself amount to diversification. “A market is only stable when it runs on commercial flights and commercial demand,” he said.

Long Stays and the Digital Funnel

Two presentations addressed demand that the traditional tour model does not capture. Markos Korvesis, Founder of Nomad Career and Co-Founder of Da Nang Nomad Fest, distinguished the digital nomad from the backpacker and from the four-night tourist, and argued that a 45-night guest buys “a lifestyle ecosystem” of food and beverage, laundry, fitness, workspace and community. Citing MBO Partners’ count of 18.5 million US digital nomads in 2025 and an estimated 40 million worldwide, he noted that Da Nang already has the connectivity, with 22 non-stop international destinations and the fastest average 5G download speeds in Vietnam, and set out a five-pillar plan covering entry, live-and-work product, community, brand and measurement. His illustrative arithmetic was that 5,000 year-round long-stay residents spending VND20 to 40 million a month would add VND1.2 to 2.4 trillion in annual direct spend.

Khwan Rueangkham, Partner Manager, Government and Social Impact, APAC at Meta, presented Tourism Economics research showing that 78 per cent of social media users across ten major outbound markets used Facebook or Instagram to plan their most recent international trip, and that social media overtook search as the world’s largest advertising channel in 2024. Her advice to hotels and restaurants was to start with one lever, such as business messaging or creator partnerships, rather than attempt everything at once. Riman Oueiti, Head of Executive Programmes and Enrolment at Les Roches and Glion (Sommet Education), addressed the leadership gap in a single question: “The rooms are being built. Who is going to lead them?”

What It Means for the Trade

Three practical conclusions emerged for operators and investors. The first is that pricing, not occupancy, is the variable to watch in 2027, particularly in Da Nang, where a record pipeline meets peak occupancy above 90 per cent. The second is that the “right guest” is increasingly defined by value per arrival rather than by passport: India, the United States, Australia and long-haul Europe are rising in Da Nang’s mix, and long-stay and celebration segments are being priced on a 30-, 60- or 90-day basis. The third is that the indicators now being tracked at destination level, namely recommendation rates, brand awareness and reputation, are the ones moving in the wrong direction, and they are the ones that decide whether a satisfied visitor becomes a referral.

Da Nang’s targets for 2026 are 19.1 million visitors served by accommodation, 8.7 million of them international, and close to VND70 trillion in lodging, dining and travel revenue. Through July the city had recorded 12.1 million arrivals, 6.01 million of them international, up 28.1 per cent year on year, while July lodging and food and beverage revenue reached VND7.4 trillion, up 35.2 per cent.

The organisers framed the day’s conclusion as an ordering rather than a choice: define the value the destination wants to create, choose the markets and the guests accordingly, and let volume grow on that foundation.

Sources

Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism; National Statistics Office (Ministry of Finance); Thailand Ministry of Tourism and Sports; Tourism Malaysia; STR (CoStar Group) presentation “Vietnam’s Hotel Market: Growth, Gaps, and What’s Next”, 20 August 2026; The Outbox Company; World Economic Forum, Travel & Tourism Development Index 2024; Pear Anderson; Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre; Da Nang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism; MBO Partners, Digital Nomads 2025; Tourism Economics for Meta, 2025; WARC. Panel remarks are taken from the recorded discussion and lightly edited for clarity.