A lot of travel firms feature offered super-cheap tours in status to encourage the obligation, despite the input cost increases.
The fees of the tours designed for Noel and 2012 New Gathering remain the same with the old year’s levels. Travel firms jazz slightly augmented the fees of whatever tours to offset the sign cost increases. Meanwhile, most of the tours ready the fees idempotent, and especially, whatever tours individual justified seen the fees decreasing to tempt author travelers.
Super-cheap tours hit the market
It is quite a surprise that the tour fees have not increased in accordance with consumer price index (CPI) increases. Especially, the fees of some tours have even been lowered to stimulate the demand.
Fiditour, for example, has launched a sale promotion program for the Christmas and 2012 New Year, under which sharp tour fee decreases are being offered to the tours from the south to the north. Those travelers, who book the tours to Hanoi, Bac Ninh and Ha Long Bay, now can enjoy the price reduction of 3-3.5 million dong for 4-5 day tours, with the departure time on the days just before Tet (the first day of the new Lunar Year is January 23, 2012).
Vietravel has also announced preferential tour fees for the travelers to the north with the 2.5-3 million dong reductions. Especially, the travel firm has offered surprisingly low tour fees for the tours to the flower city of Da Lat: every traveler only has to pay 1.3 million dong to enjoy a 3-day tour to the city, with the departure fixed in late November.
Explaining the tour fee reductions, travel firms all said that they have to accept lower profits by lowering tour fees in order to stimulate the demand in the context of high inflation. Big travel firms try to negotiate with restaurants, service providers and air carriers to obtain the best airfares and service fees, which allows them to reduce the tour fees.
Meanwhile, small travel firms complain that they are the biggest sufferers from the CPI increases. They cannot offer tours at overly high tour fees, because they fear they would lose clients, while they cannot set up the tour fees at low levels, because they cannot enjoy preferences from airlines or other service providers.
Nguyen Thi Hoa Le, Director of the Hoa Binh travel firm, also said that her firm has decided not to increase tour fees and accept lower profits to lure more travelers. Meanwhile, in order to compete with rivals, the firm has to offer preferential fees for some tours.
Therefore, Le said, she expects to see the number of travelers increasing this year, but the revenue may decrease.
Tours to near destinations, domestic tours preferred
In order to keep tour fees stable and lure more travelers, a lot of travel firms have to change their business strategy. They have been focusing on developing short distance domestic tours, especially the ones to islands, which have been interested by travelers. Meanwhile, the tours to South East Asia, which were considered the key tourism products in previous years, now are not considered the most important markets any more.
Le from Hoa Binh travel firm said that she has to anticipate everything in order to take initiative in providing tours. “We have our own vehicles that carry travelers, while we have some hotels so as to keep service fees stable,” she said.
Truong Hoang Phuong, Marketing Director of Vietmark, also said that in order to cut down expenses, enterprises tend to choose the tours to near destinations. He affirmed that though the tour fees decrease, the quality of the services will remain unchanged.
Not only travel firms, but hotels also try to keep service fees stable. Do Tuan Hung Manh, Managing Director of Mom Da Chim resort, said that the resort has a lot of Russian and foreign guests. However, in order to help domestic travel firms stabilize the tour fees, the resort still offers big preferences to Vietnamese travelers.
