Hội An or Đà Nẵng as a base, and why Hội An addresses now say Đà Nẵng

Two bases, one administrative city

Hội An and Đà Nẵng are different places to stay, even though both now sit inside one administrative city. Đà Nẵng's tourism promotion centre says that on 12 June 2025 the National Assembly adopted a resolution merging the former Đà Nẵng city and Quảng Nam province into a new Đà Nẵng city. The same page puts the new city at 11,859.59 km², with 94 commune-level units: 23 wards, 70 communes and one special zone.[1] The heritage centre's older pages place Hội An city in Quảng Nam province, and the centre now gives its address as Phường Hội An, TP. Đà Nẵng.[3][7]

That change is about addresses, not about where you sleep. The old town is still the old town, and the beaches and airport of the coastal city are still where they were. XTOUR keeps Hội An and Đà Nẵng as separate destinations, and the choice between them is a choice between two kinds of stay.

What the merger changed on the ground

On the official pages XTOUR read, what changed is the address, and not all of those pages have caught up. The Hội An museum system's page for the Hội An Museum, dated September 2026, gives "phường Hội An, thành phố Đà Nẵng", while the footer of the same site still says "Hội An, Quảng Nam".[9][10] The heritage centre's homepage gives its own new address but still describes Cù Lao Chàm as part of "thành phố Hội An, tỉnh Quảng Nam".[3] In February 2026 the centre listed the area of its Nguyên Tiêu festival as the wards of Hội An, Hội An Đông and Hội An Tây and the commune of Tân Hiệp.[6]

The notice lists those units without saying how they relate to the former Hội An city, and XTOUR does not fill that gap. The 2025 province mergers article explains the national change.

Hội An as a base

Staying in Hội An puts you inside the heritage town. The heritage centre's overview of the old town, inscribed by UNESCO in 1999, counts more than 1,000 historic and cultural relics in Hội An and says the old town is still home to thousands of people.[7] Its ticket page asks visitors to buy the old-town ticket before entering and to keep to the rules of the streets reserved for pedestrians and non-motorised vehicles, and lists a "Phố đêm" night programme with Bài chòi, folk games and street music.[4] A separate centre notice says the "Đêm phố cổ" night, a recreation of the early 20th-century town by candle and lantern light, is held on the 14th night of every lunar month.[5]

In XTOUR's reading, a Hội An base is for the things the centre's own pages describe: the old-town ticket, the museums and the festival calendar such as Nguyên Tiêu. It is also where the boats to Cù Lao Chàm start: Đà Nẵng's tourism portal says they leave from Cửa Đại port in Hội An or other docks.[12]

The two places also share a history. The heritage centre's ceramics-museum page says that in the 19th century Hội An's sailing port declined and gave way to the steam port of Đà Nẵng, and that this decline spared Hội An the changes of a modern city.[8]

Đà Nẵng as a base

The national tourism authority's Đà Nẵng page describes a different kind of stay. It lists My Khe Beach sweeping south from the Sơn Trà peninsula, the Marble Mountains with their caves and pagodas, and the Sơn Trà coastal road with its Lady Buddha statue and red-shanked douc langurs. It also names the Hải Vân Pass "between Da Nang and Hue" and the city's street food around Hàn Market. For arrival, the page names Đà Nẵng International Airport and says daily flights link it to Vietnam's major hubs.[2]

Đà Nẵng's own tourism portal, in the part of its overview written before the merger, calls the city the focal point for three World Heritage sites: the Huế monuments, Hội An Ancient Town and Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary.[1] That describes a city to travel out from, which is XTOUR's reading of the Đà Nẵng base too.

Mỹ Sơn is in neither

Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary is not in Hội An, nor in Đà Nẵng as a traveller means either. Its management board gives its address as Mỹ Sơn hamlet, Thu Bồn commune, Đà Nẵng city, and describes more than 70 Champa temple-tower structures built between the 4th and 13th centuries in a closed valley.[11] The "Đà Nẵng city" in that address is the merged administrative city, not the coastal city. XTOUR does not know the travel time to it from either town; the Mỹ Sơn guide covers the site.

Choosing

XTOUR's reading of these pages: choose Hội An if the reason for the trip is the old town itself, its ticketed houses and museums, its night programmes and festivals, and the island trip from Cửa Đại. Choose Đà Nẵng if the reason is the beach, the airport, the Marble Mountains and Sơn Trà, or the Hải Vân Pass toward Huế. The merger does not make either one part of the other as a place to stay.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR publishes no travel time, road distance or transfer option between Hội An, Đà Nẵng and Mỹ Sơn, and does not know current hotel areas, prices or airport transfer arrangements. It has not read the full text of the National Assembly resolution; the date and figures above are as Đà Nẵng's tourism portal states them, and the 2025 province mergers article gives the resolution's national figures from a published summary. For the wider region, see Vietnam.