This is something that I am both pleased about and also a bit upset about but I try to keep my tone a bit neutral when I talk about it because not only am I not Vietnamese, but I also chose to live in a well-known tourist area and despite the fact that I have been here for years, I am still considered a "tourist" by all legal metrics.
For someone that lives here, I don't need an official government report to realize that tourism is up, WAY UP this year than years past. All I have to do is walk out of my apartment and go literally anywhere in the area.
src
heading down to the beach from June to August results in you seeing at least this level of people there and it is worse early in the morning and around 4-6pm because the main segment of the tourism here is from Asian tourists, who prefer to stay out of the sunlight. To each their own! I have lived in this part long enough that I also prefer to stay out of the sun but there was a time when I too was a sun worshiper.
According to a recent report, Vietnam has welcomed 10.7 million visitors so far in 2025, which is up 21% from the previous years. While these figures are anyone's guess where they are obtained from, there is also a 30% increase in revenue generated by these increased numbers. I suppose this explains the rather crazy amount of development that is currently going on in my neighborhood and all around here since I do live in one of the most popular beach locations in the entire city.
src
If you do come to Da Nang there is a very very good chance that you will end up staying in one of these two areas even if you didn't mean to. The misspelled "Na Dang" (lol) area is seeing an uptick in visitors that are primarily Korean. They have kind of claimed it as their own and the riverwalk areas over there are filled with quiet and polite yet of course, still in the way, bus tours filled with dozens of package tourists getting on and off and going to a bunch of different things.
I don't mind it so much over there because the river roads are huge and there are places that are specifically designed for vehicles of that magnitude. Over here on "my" side though, it is a different story. The roads were barely capable of accommodating two lanes of car and motorbike traffic and the addition of buses has made travel through various neighborhoods a real pain where sometimes the traffic is impossibly gridlocked and everyone just sits and honks their horns, because that always gets things moving, right?
We have gotten to the point here where motorbikes are driving on the sidewalks to get past the stuck buses and cars and pedestrians just need to be on the lookout at all times.
I am hopeful that the police will do something about this and I think a solution would be to simply ban buses from using these streets at all but this seems unlikely to happen seeing as how they just continue to build more and more hotels in this area.
The boom in people visiting has seen there become a seasonal rate for even long term rentals in my neighborhood that thankfully doesn't apply to me because I have been here for years and am locked in at old rates because I have a good landlord that is very pleased to have someone stay here long term that is dependable and not going to mess up the place.
My rather simple 1-bedroom unit when I first moved in, was at 10 million VND ($382) but these days if someone is moving in for a minimum of 6 months they will get a rate for the same apartment for 15 million VND ($573) and if someone is staying a month or less the adjusted monthly rate starts at over $700. That's a pretty amazing uptick in revenue for my building owner, so I am sure she is quite happy about this.
The surrounding other businesses are not really faring as well though because with the increase in tourism has just resulted in an increased redundancy in types of business. For example, there used to be just a few massage places in my part of town now there are dozens and the sales people are becoming increasingly aggressive and are now approaching anyone who walks by following you with a price card. Coffeeshops are far too abundant and a couple of them go out of business every few months only to be replaced by, you guessed it, another coffeeshop. Pizza places are so abundant that there is no noticeable difference from one to the next and our neighborhood used to have a single Indian restaurant and now we have over 20.
This sort of over-expansion might seem good from a money perspective but I would imagine that the actual owners of these businesses are less-than-thrilled at what is going on. Here's what happens when an area experiences a really rapid increase in traffic: The owners of a building are charging as much rent as they think they can get. Someone fills that business with something like a coffeeshop that makes enough money to pay the bills and staff. Then, other coffeeshops move in that sell the same product and normally a price war begins. Now all the coffeeshops are not making enough money to turn a reasonable profit, the owner of the land looks around and sees how popular the area is and jacks the rent when their contract expires. The small business owner has no choice but to close and the cycle begins anew.
In my tiny little area there are only a handful of businesses that have managed to be the same business the entire time I have lived here. One of them is a 24 hours sports bar that is always going to be popular with the late night drunks, and the other is a craft beer garden that has managed to remain unique enough that people are always going to go there. Both of these places are two-story buildings that are surrounded by much taller structures and therefore are probably going to be on the chopping block themselves once their contracts are up as the land owner might be looking to sell the land for millions of dollars to take advantage of the trend while they can.
We recently got a "girly bar" just down the street from me and this is the first one of its type in the area. This is normally always a sign that your amount of tourism has nearly reached critical mass.
src
While I am excited for the owners of stuff (I guess) and am even more pleased that I am locked in at my current rental price, I fear for what is going to happen to this area. There is so much construction going on where I am that there honestly will soon not be any space left to build on and in the meantime they have eliminated ALL nature and made parking impossible. There is simply no space left.
It's a bit ironic that the people that are taking advantage of the increased popularity are actually the ones responsible for eliminating what made the area popular in the first place.
And in the meantime Vietnam government never does anything to try to promote the area for tourism. I have never seen a Vietnamese tourism advertisement anywhere in the world. They clearly don't give a rip because their official tourism website is a 404 website and always has been since I have lived here
I will continue to live here provided that my rental agreement remains sound. I don't necessarily like what is happening on the street below and simply walking around is kind of a pain most of the day but in the end it is still a pretty great place to live, provided you can learn to navigate the crazy traffic and live on a high enough floor to be away from the noise.