Domestic tours competitive with outbound tours

      The sharp falls of domestic tour fees have helped lure travellers. The cheap domestic tours have persuaded more and more people to travel domestically instead of going abroad.
Programme makes impressive start
Vu The Binh, Director of the Travel Department under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), said that it is now the high tide of the “Impressive Vietnam” programme; the number of travel firms registering to join the tourism promotion programme has reached 84. Moreover, 114 hotels have also registered to lower hotel room rates.
Binh said that the programme has stopped receiving applications for registration from travel firms, saying that it is now the right time to build up detailed tour fee reductions.
However, no limitation in the number of hotels joining the promotion programme will be set. Many hotels have lowered room rates by more than 30-50% as required by the programme.
Binh said that the promotion programme has helped domestic tours prosper. The number of travellers has been increasing at famous tourist sites. More and more travellers have been flocking to festivals, including the international fireworks festival in March 2009 in the central city of Da Nang.
According to Le Thu Hang, Head of the Market Division No 3 under Vietnamtourism in Hanoi, the number of tourists travelling under the promotion programme has increased significantly, pushing the turnover from domestic tours of the company up by 30% in comparison with the same period of last year.
The director of a big travel firm in the south estimated that the number of travellers and turnover of the firm in the first three months of the year increased by 30%. The director said that in the current difficulties, opportunities are open to all businesses. He added that the tour fee reductions have ‘saved’ his firm.
Domestic tours very competitive
Binh from VNAT noted that travellers now choose domestic tours because tour fees are reasonably low, while it takes less planning to travel domestically than travel abroad.
Therefore, Binh said that domestic tour fees should be lowered more in order to compete with outbound tours, whose fees have been decreasing, but have remained stable recently.
“Big tourist destination countries in the region like Thailand, Singapore and China, South Korea and Japan have been making every effort to lure Vietnamese travellers to their countries. Vietnamese travel firms should not be defeated in their home country,” Binh said.
Meanwhile, VNAT, on one hand, while mentioning the increase in the number of domestic travellers, admitted that the number proves to be far below previously. Some well-known tourist sites have witnessed numbers of travellers increase, but there are fewer tourists this year than last year.
Vietnam Airlines has announced the promotion programme will last until May 31. Travel firms still do not know if the air carrier will prolong the promotion programme until the end of the year.
Foreign tourists from France, western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, ASEAN have come back in tours of big companies; however, the number of travellers has still decreased significantly. Statistics show that the number of foreign travellers coming to Vietnam decreased by 10% in January, 20% in February and 16% in the first quarter of 2009.
Binh predicted that the number of foreign tourists coming to Vietnam in April will not increase significantly. It is expected that from May, the number of tourists will increase gradually, when the advertisement campaigns in Japan, South Korea, western Europe, northern Europe and the US show effect.