Vietnam’s Golden Bridge is a Social Media Hit. What Now?
The world has very clearly fallen head-over-heels for Vietnam’s latest tourism sensation: the “Golden Bridge” of Bà Nà Hills. Social media can’t get enough of it. Major outlets have lined up to fawn over it and the public’s reaction. Most startlingly, it appears to have (at least temporarily) supplanted The War as the first thing to spring to an American’s lips when they find out you reside in modern day Vietnam. The country has long deserved a more well-rounded set of associations in the public consciousness; perhaps this is a start.
As swell as all that is, you can count me among the long time Vietnam residents who initially rolled his eyes at the whole thing. It seemed like another gimmick from the the country’s foremost gimmick merchant. That can be something of an unforgivable sin for those of us who have spent the last couple decades evangelizing for Vietnam’s simpler, less celebrated wonders, but sometimes we all overthink it.
I’ve not personally visited the Golden Bridge, but I am familiar with the complex of which it is a part. Sun Group’s Bà Nà Hills is the kind of development that leads many Vietnam watchers towards a chronic cynicism concerning the country’s tourism development. It’s a bit over the top. More than 1400 meters up in the highlands outside of Đà Nẵng, you’ll find a French village — at least as it is imagined by those appealing to a Vietnamese public venturing as far as these central provinces. On the same grounds is a wax museum. Hotel and villa accommodations. A mountain train. A temple complex featuring a 27 meter tall Buddha. A roller coaster. All of it accessed by “the world longest single-rope cable car system.”
There’s a lot going on there. That is the backdrop many of us have close in mind when we see those (admittedly impressive) photos of the recently added Golden Bridge. We imagine tens of thousands of Instagram-inspired travelers showing up expecting a quiet, reverent nature viewing spot only to find themselves in the sort of place that Krusty the Clown might feel at home endorsing. But does any of that actually matter?
Bà Nà Hills is a very successful tourism destination. It gets well over two million visitors a year. A lot of people love it. Even though I’m in no rush to return, I will be watching to see how the popularity of the Golden Bridge affects future tourism trends. It has the potential to introduce an unexpectedly crucial pivot point for the industry.
In isolation, there is reason to be optimistic about the surging popularity of a bridge like this. It is a relatively simple structure of the sort that could serve as a template for many places. Compared to a lot of tourism projects in Vietnam, it is low impact. Most of the environmental costs involve getting people to and from the elevated viewing space. It also (either directly or implicitly) places a high value on an area of viewed landscape considerably larger than it itself takes up. It can be hard to get a population to care about preserving places they will never be able to visit or see directly, but well-placed structures of this sort may be able to reacquaint large number of people with the simple majesties of their nation’s natural order.
There are also some ways that these structures could fit the specific era Vietnam finds itself in. As a rapidly modernizing nation with a growing economy, the nation is eager to flex a bit. It seeks to demonstrate its growing stature with the usual high profile indicators of “arrival.” Towering new skyscrapers. High profile international events. Audacious product launches. Vietnam is not content to inch forward any longer, and one could imagine a series of bridge and viewing platform projects that fit into this. These have the potential to be engineering feats of international renown that simultaneously highlight Vietnam’s unique natural beauty. It’s a balance not often being struck here.
It is also clear that these structures and the settings they would be placed in are intensely photogenic. They are tailor made for the social media age. Can we even begin to estimate the value of the exposure the early photos of the Golden Bridge have generated for Vietnam tourism? With the right eye for design, these sorts of structures can be built for maximum in-person effect while also being optimized for social media consumption. Over the last decade, Vietnam has shown that it has a generation of architects capable of great things. Might this be a new outlet for their creative work that reaches a broader international audience?
Finally, these structures have the potential to address a tourism development issue that has plagued the industry in recent years. How can we relieve some of the pressure on the already successful destinations that are threatened by over-visitation (such as Hạ Long and Hội An) while bringing less visited and often much poorer regions of the country into play? The areas best suited to these sorts of structures very nearly fulfill this mission by definition. Their high elevation seclusion from previous development is an asset instead of the usual hindrance.
An ideal example of this sort of would-be tourism destination with a bit of an identity crisis is the Bình Liêu region of Quảng Ninh Province. It is a mountainous area situated between Hạ Long to the south and the Chinese border to the north. It is all terraced hillsides, ethnic minority villages, waterfalls, and hikable trials. It’s gorgeous. For the past few years, a modest-sized tourism company (who has had great success with western tourists in Hạ Long Bay) has been working with the local Bình Liêu government and village leaders to craft a sustainable tourism strategy. They have been educating the local population and doing all they can to find a way for the area to benefit from tourism without being overwhelmed by it.
Of course the company wants to eventually profit off of their efforts, but they had held off on sending a single tourist before they felt they could do so responsibly. Then they had the plug pulled on the entire project by the province-level government. Apparently said government have decided it is preferable to align with “experienced operations with more resources” which everyone in the area have interpreted as code for Sun Group, VinGroup, and FLC.
This was all before the breakout success of the Golden Bridge. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that a group of low impact viewing platforms and pedestrian bridges would be an ideal middle ground for Bình Liêu. It would provide some of the high profile exposure that many destinations (and officials) crave while not tuning a place of quiet charm into an amusement park. Arrival numbers could be managed so that the area adapts before it is overrun, while the ease of adding an another overnight stay to Hạ Long cruise itineraries (something desperately needed) would mean that arrival numbers could be increased with relative ease. It would seem win-win all around.
But will those with the resources to set Vietnam’s tourism direction see things this way? It seems just as (or even more) likely that boardrooms and ministry offices will see the success of the Golden Bridge as an endorsement of the broader Sun Group vision for Vietnam’s tourism centers. Sun Group’s usual approach is anything but low impact or environmentally friendly. They are currently developing an 2,000-room casino/resort complex on a previously remote part of Cái Bầu Island in the controversial Vân Đồn District. Their entertainment complex built on reclaimed land now dominates the urban waterfront next to the environmentally stressed UNESCO heritage site, Hạ Long Bay. They have sought approval to build a $200 million cable car system through the caves of Phong Nha despite repeated warnings of such a project’s negative environmental impact.
I don’t think anyone expects Sun Group to suddenly halt its multi-multi-billion dollar momentum in the country because they found out a portion of the public appreciates a nice, unobstructed landscape. What we might hope for, however, is that the singular identity of the Golden Bridge will inspire a different, more modest form of copycat-ism in other locales. Very few smaller companies or local governments can dream of competing with the national ambitions of Sun Group or its corporate peers, but what if they don’t need to?
That is where the decision making gets especially tricky. Many of the would-be foreign tourists currently sharing images of the Golden Bridge via English speaking social media would be delighted in having a series of advantageously-placed, yet modest, landscape viewing opportunities scattered throughout the country. There aren’t a lot of auxiliary services and buildout necessary. Safe, reliable transportation and clean, affordable accommodations are the primary needs. Some hiking or cycling trails would be nice. That’s about it, because the times and places a foreign traveler encounters between these various destinations are just as much part of the “Vietnam experience” as any of the rest of it.
This can be overlooked by those charting the direction of tourism in the country. They seem to underestimate how much casual charm everyday life in Vietnam has for visitors. This oversight is reinforced by domestic Vietnamese tourists who expect to be wowed by something unique in their own local travels. For them, the day-to-day is what they are looking to get away from for a while. The conflict between these two sets of expectations is a fundamental conundrum at the heart of Vietnamese tourism development today.
Add to this the surging numbers of Chinese tour groups whose business model is predicated on large, self-contained destinations to shuttle between, and you can understand why some of the optimism over the Golden Bridge is tempered. It’s beauty and potential are so simple, but again, we’re all likely to overthink it.
