The fact that more than 3,000 Indonesian tourists visited Bà Nà Hills from March 27 to April 15 in a single delegation was a phenomenon, as one of the biggest delegations from the country to ever visit Việt Nam.

It also means this 260 million residents market is eyeing Việt Nam. How this great potential needs to be exploited is a great question.

Recently, Đà Nẵng International airport has witnessed many flights transporting Indonesian delegations to this city. According to Viking Tour, the company that brought the delegation to Đà Nẵng, the group of more than 3,000 visitors came in the form of MICE tourism. Trần Xuân Hùng, director of Viking Tours, said this is also the most crowded Indonesian delegation to Việt Nam from 2006 to present.

The first destination in their journey was the leading tourist resort in Việt Nam - Sun World Bà Nà Hills with the famous Golden Bridge. Viking Tours’ director also said the delegation had previously surveyed destinations such as Thailand, the Republic of Korea and finally chose Bà Nà - Đà Nẵng.

Attracted by Golden Bridge -Bà Nà Hills

When asked why Indonesian customers chose Bà Nà as a destination, Hùng said, Bà Nà Hills had many conditions to meet the needs and specificities of Indonesian tourists, specifically the supply of vehicles, food and the capacity to organise a gala of up to 600 people.

Besides, Indonesian tourists as well as many other Asian tourists like Koreans and Japanese enjoy going on cable cars to see mountains. With the advantages of available nature, many unique architectural works and festival programmes attracting tourists year-round, such as the recent Tulip Festival, Bà Nà Hills wowed the delegation from Indonesia.

Martini Polina, an Indonesian tourist said, "This is the first time I came to Việt Nam. I visited Huế, Hội An and was really impressed with Bà Nà Hills tourist area. I didn’t know in Việt Nam there was such a unique and beautiful tourist area. It was great".

Many other tourists in the delegation also said they chose Bà Nà Hills because recently, the resort has become a phenomenon with the appearance of the famous Golden Bridge. More than 95 per cent of the visitors expressed their satisfaction with Bà Nà Hills.

Great potential but exploitation needs a method

With the fourth largest population in the world (more than 250 million people), at least 8 million Indonesian foreign tourists travel abroad every year, of which 88.6 per cent travel to Asia-Pacific countries.

According to the General Statistics Office, in 2018, there were 87,941 arrivals of Indonesian tourists to Việt Nam, up 8.5 per cent compared to 2017. Meanwhile, in 2016, there were only 70,000 visitors and in 2015, this figure was 62,240 arrivals. The phenomenon of more than 3,000 people coming to Bà Nà and Đà Nẵng is a turning point. But after that turning point, the question is, what are we going to do to draw more such big groups?

Research shows that Indonesian tourists’ top factors for their trips are friendliness, family-friendly atmosphere, security, friendly and hospitable people and clean environment. They also like to buy food, confectionery products, clothes and coffee.

At one destination, they have a lot of needs at the same time. In addition, many Indonesian people are Muslims, requiring Halal food; therefore, not every place is suitable for them. That is why they choose Bà Nà Hills to enjoy the cool mountain atmosphere at Mercure Đà Nẵng French Village hotel, to check-in with fairy castles, see Golden Bridge, attend a festival, have fun with games, shop, and eat suitable dishes.

Nguyễn Xuân Bình, deputy director of Đà Nẵng Tourism Department said: “It can be said that Bà Nà Hills has been put into operation in the last 10 years, contributing greatly to promoting the image of tourism in Đà Nẵng City and has also contributed to providing quality services to serve visitors, providing quality, different destinations for domestic and international travellers. In the future, we hope that investors will also be interested to invest in tourist destinations with different characteristics as what Bà Nà Hills and Sun Group have done to create new products and new attractions for Đà Nẵng”.

The difference is a criterion, so firms can confidently advertise to the market with 260 million Indonesian people and other difficult markets. That is why Việt Nam’s tourism needs more works, projects of scale, class and multi-level like Bà Nà Hills. Another criterion to promote the flow of visitors from this market is convenient transportation. According to Bình, there is a need for a direct flight between Indonesia's famous tourist destinations and Đà Nẵng.

“In order to attract visitors, we need to increase the accessibility of destinations by direct flights, specifically there is the direct route between Đà Nẵng and Indonesia's crowded destinations such as Jakarta, Medal and Bali. Because Indonesia is a populous country, then travel costs will be greatly reduced, of course it will attract more visitors in the future ", Bình added.