No customers
The mural road was implemented by the People's Committee of Son Tra District, Da Nang City in the Lang Ong area, Man Thai Ward, with a length of nearly 400m and a total value of 600 million VND. Most of the paintings depict the cultural beauty, daily life, and livelihood of people living along the Son Tra coast. However, this mural road is gradually being forgotten.
Mr. Tran Van Nua, a resident of Man Thai Ward, Son Tra District, Da Nang City, said that the number of visitors coming to visit and take photos has gradually decreased over the past two years. Initially, they were mainly international visitors, but now the number of visitors has also decreased significantly. One reason is that this area does not have many experiential activities, and the surrounding locations do not leave an impression on tourists.
“When the locality put the mural road into operation to serve tourists, the local people met to discuss and develop a plan to create a livelihood from the mural road. However, after the mural road was put into operation, it was not effective. The business and economic development of the surrounding people also stagnated,” said Mr. Tran Van Nua.
According to the report of the Department of Statistics of Da Nang City, in the first 8 months of 2024, the total number of guests served by accommodation establishments is estimated at 7.8 million. During the recent National Day holiday on September 2, the city's total tourism revenue reached more than 1,200 billion VND, an increase of more than 33% over the same period in 2023. However, the mural road near the Ong Lang area is still deserted.
According to Mr. Pham Van Thien, a resident of Man Thai Ward, Son Tra District, Da Nang City, it is necessary to further expand the mural streets to attract tourists. At the same time, raise people's awareness of maintaining public hygiene and ensuring environmental hygiene in the alleys of the mural streets.
Difficult to do business
The People's Committee of Man Thai Ward informed that currently, there are very few tourists coming to visit and take pictures in this area. This leads to households and shops in this area being unable to do business and develop accompanying services. However, the local government still regularly reminds households to maintain public hygiene and not to dry clothes in the mural village area to ensure the general aesthetics.
“The area of houses in the mural street area is too small to open accompanying services, so when tourists come, they just pass by and leave,” said the leader of Man Thai ward.
Previously, the Da Nang mural village (alley 75 Nguyen Van Linh street, Phuoc Ninh ward, Hai Chau district) was also built, completed and put into use from March 29, 2018. This is a project implemented by the Phuoc Ninh ward Youth Union with the support of many artists from the Da Nang Fine Arts Association and some students from the Da Nang University of Architecture. This mural village includes 15,000m2 of paintings with a length of more than 1km. The investment cost for the project is more than 530 million VND.
People who want to visit can go from both sides at alley 75 Nguyen Van Linh street and K257 Phan Chau Trinh street. This place was expected to be a "virtual paradise" and an experience for tourists. However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Da Nang's tourism industry stagnated, causing many consequences and this mural village was also affected.
After a very short time, all the colors of this mural village gradually faded, the walls gradually became old and dirty... The mural road, which had been invested with hundreds of millions of dong, was no longer attractive to tourists after a short time.
