The gushing out of tours and the overloading will not be seen in this New period circuit season. Since fill eff to fasten their sing, traveling firms’ offices seem to rest
quiescent with modest bookings.
“The number of travelers booking tour for this Christmas and New Year tour does not increase greatly in comparison with the previous year because the Tet holiday comes just several days after the New Year holiday”, said an executive of Vietravel.
Doan Thi Thanh Tra, head of marketing division of Saigontourist, since early November, 2,000 travelers have booked tours for Christmas holiday and 2012 New Year, an increase of 10 percent over the same period of last year.
As for domestic tours, travelers tend to choose short-term tour to Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, Phu Quoc Island where they can go discovering and fishing, or to Da Lat to attend Da Lat Flower Festival.
Tran Quoc Bao, head of domestic travel division of Saigontourist said that the tours to islands and to the sea remain the top choice of travelers. For example, our tours to Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, Da Nang, Phu Quoc…have most attracted travelers. Unlike previous years, travelers nowadays try to arrange their trips soon and book tours many days in advance so as to be able to choose the best tour”.
Bao has affirmed that the overloading and the early closing of tours will not happen this year because the number of travelers will be not overly high like in previous years.
Many travel firms have launched the tours specifically designed for Viet kieu, or oversee Vietnamese who return to Vietnam to celebrate Tet. Those who return to Vietnam many days before Tet prefer the tour from Hanoi to Trang An tourism site, Do temple and Ha Long bay which lasts four days. They also like the four-day-tour from Da Nang to Hoi An, Ba Na tourism site and Hue.
Duong Mai Lan, a senior executive of Vietravel said that the fees of the outbound tours on Tet holiday will not increase greatly in comparison with ordinary days. Most of the tour fees keep unchanged while travelers will enjoy fee reduction for some tours thanks to the sale promotion campaign lauched by Vietnam Airlines. For example, the tour fee to the UK has decreased by five billion dongs.”
Since the holiday is short, travelers tend to go to nearby markets such as Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Myanmar, Brunei, Indonesia and Cambodia.
Saigontourist has found out from its survey that travelers usually choose economy tours, which fit their pockets such as the one to Fuji Mount – Japan ot tours to South Korea including Pusan – Jeju – Seoul – Everland which costs 15,990,000 dongs.
Whether to raise tour fee was once a headache to travel firms. Despite the low demand travel firms still have decided to raise the tour fee by 15 – 20 percent in comparison with the last year due to the input service fee increases. Nguyen van My, General Director of Lua Viet travel firm said that in principle, travel firms can raise the tour fee when everything gets more expensive. However, travel firms have only raised fee at a moderate level because they understand that overly high increases would badly affect the tourism industry.
Pham Le Thao, Deputy Director of the Travel Department of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) said that the tour fee increases are beyond the control of travel firms, because the hotel room rates has increased by 30 percent and meal services by 20 percent.
