A lot of domestic and outbound tours have been fully booked in the May holiday this year
 |
The forecasts that the demand for traveling would decrease as people have to fasten their belt in the context of high inflation have not come true. Vietnamese people still spend big money on traveling and entertainment services. While the Ministry of Planning and Investment reported that more than 3000 businesses halted operation just in the first two months of the year, travel firms still have reported the sharp increases of the tourists in groups.
May holiday tours fully booked
The May holiday is believed to be a busy season for travel firms, as employees would have four days off. Therefore, though the holiday would come only in one month, travel firms now do not receive more travelers for some tours.
Quoc, an officer of a bank branch in Thu Duc district in HCM City, said that he booked the tour for the bank’s staff to the central city of Da Nang on the May holiday in February already. Now he wants to book the tour for some more officers, but the travel firm has refused to serve.
Not only the tours to Da Nang, where the international firework festival will take place, but other tourism sites also have also become the destinations of people on the May holiday. Dan tri newspaper has reported that the demand on the May holiday has increased by 15-20 percent, despite the big difficulties and high inflation.
Nguyen Minh Man, a senior executive of Vietravel said that a lot of tours for the May holiday have run out, while other tours have seen the occupancy rate of over 70 percent. He said that the travel firm expects to serve 25,000 travelers who take domestic and outbound tours this May holiday, an increase of 20 percent in comparison with the same period of 2011.
Saigontourist has reported that it has sold 65 percent of the total 16,000 seats offered for the May holiday, an increase of 10-15 percent over the last year. Fiditour, which has received bookings for the last two weeks only, has also reported that 40 percent have been booked.
Especially, travel firms all have reported the sharp increase of the travelers in groups this year. In general, businesses do not organize tours for their staffs on big holidays, because they fear the overcrowded tourism sites and low quality of services. However, things seem to be quite different this year.
A representative of Hanoi Redtours said on Lao dong newspaper that the 4 day and 3 night Da Nang – Hoi An – Ba Na tour proves to be the most favored one this year, because travelers would have the chance to attend the 2012 international firework festival.
Demand for outbound tours on the rise
Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai, a senior executive of Fiditour, said that the travel firm now has to contact airlines to ask for more flights to Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia because of the increasing demand. Vietnamese travelers not only choose near destinations with low fees, but they tend to go to farer markets this year.
Besides the familiar tours to South East Asia countries, travelers have booked the tours to Japan, South Korea, the US and Europe. A travel firm has revealed that the number of travelers booking tours to the US for April increased by two folds in comparison with the same period of the last year.
Travel firms have said that the number of travelers keeps rising steadily, because they have been trying to keep the tour fees unchanged, or the tour fees have increased very slightly by five percent, because travel firms signed contracts before with service providers at fixed prices.
C. V
