Higher tour fees don’t affect number of tourists
04/09/08 (GMT+7)
Contrary to all predictions, the number of tourists on the September 2 holiday did not see decreases due to the high inflation. However, travel firms complained that travellers booked tours late, just before the holiday, which forced them to refuse to provide services
While Vietravel said that the firm did not increase the fees of domestic tours, Ben Thanh Tourist said that package fees increased by 10-20% compared to the same holiday last year.
Van Phu Nghia, a sales staff at Ben Thanh Tourist, said that the hotel room rate has been raised by 20%, while meal prices have increased by 15%. However, the sharpest increases have been seen in transport fees. Nghia said that the fee has increased by 30% over the same period of last year. Last year, the travel firm paid VND6.5mil in transport fees for a tour, while the figure has risen to VND8mil this year.
“Everything is getting more and more expensive, but we accept 15% lower profit in order to stimulate demand,” Nghia said.
As for outbound tours, travel firms say the tour fee has increased by 5-7% due to costlier air tickets. However, Vietravel said that it has kept the cost of tours to Hong Kong and China for shopping unchanged in order to lure more clients.
Higher prices have given travel firms headaches. However, the biggest problem for them is that clients nowadays tend to make late tour bookings. Nghia from Ben Thanh Tourist said that most tourists only booked tours just before the holiday, which caused big difficulties for travel firms in booking hotel rooms in the high season in the context of the hotel room rate fluctuations.
Nghia said that Ben Thanh Tourist had to refuse to provide services to a lot of clients. In some destinations, like Vung Tau, hotels do not have professional services. They sometimes cancel contracts with travel firms without warning or raise hotel room rates without negotiating with travel firms to give rooms to clients who pay more money.
Nghia affirmed that the number of tourists did not decrease as previously predicted. Despite the high inflation, people still wanted to travel on the holiday after working hard all year.
Vietravel said that the firm served 2,200 clients who took domestic tours and 1,800 clients who made outbound tours. As students started the school year earlier than previous years, the travellers were mainly young people who already have jobs, middle-aged people, housewives and Viet Kieu.
Familiar tours with the destinations of Nha Trang, Phan Thiet, Phu Quoc Island, Da Nang and Hue city remained the choices of many clients. However, it was quite a surprise that Da Lat city was not favoured by tourists this year.
As for outbound tours, neighbouring countries like Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, proved to be the biggest choices of Vietnamese travellers. A lot of people also chose to travel to more distant countries like Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Vietnam travel firms tried to lure travellers by launching new products for the September 2 holiday. While Ben Thanh Tourist introduced a Saigon-Cambodia road tour to attract young clients, Vietravel introduced a tour to Quy Nhon city with destinations unfamiliar to many clients like Ghenh Rang scenic spot and Hoang Hau beach.
(Source: Vietnamnet, URL:http://english.vietnamnet.vn/travel/2008/09/801890/)
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