Domestic tours bloom this summer

      According to travel firms, domestic tourist arrivals have been significantly increasing this summer. The influx of domestic visitors is seen as positive signs, particularly during such a difficult time when global international tourism is falling into recession.
Ms Duong Mai Lan, Manager of Vietravel’s Research and Development (R&D) said, in addition to traditional northern tours, Hanoians tend to tour beaches in the Central and the South, or Dalat, Cuu Long River Delta. The company is now well organising these tours. This trend is understandable since tourist spots in the North like Sapa, Cat Ba, Sam Son, Do Son… increasingly become familliar to northern tourist, who obviously will shift their direction to far provinces.
Hanoi Redtours’ Nguyen Cong Hoan also shares the idea: domestic arrivals are blooming and eyeing tourist spots in the Central and the South. Hanoi Redtours is focusing on promoting tours as Da Nang – Hoi An, Nha Trang – Dalat, Saigon – Phu Quoc… especially when Vietnam Airlines inaugurates airlines to City of Can Tho, Can Tho – Chau Doc – Ha Tien and Can Tho – Ha Tien – Phu Quoc tours would be very attractive.
Thanks to the VNAT’s launch of tourist promotion campaign namely “Impressive Vietnam”, travel firms have been reducing their tour cost considerably, which led to the rapid increase of domestic tourists in the last months as well as this summer.
A remarkable trend in this year is that tourists choose high-class destinations for real entertainment and leisure instead of travelling a number of destinations before. Some attractive tourist sites have, therefore, been overloaded.
ThangLong Tour Director Nguyen Son Ha said the company’s customers would increase by 80% over last year.
Hanoi Redtours received 1,500 domestic visitors in June alone and some 3,000 in both July and August. In spite of decreased international arrivals, the overall growth of Redtours is still 15%, thanks to the increase of domestic and outbound tourists.
Most travel firms claimed that the influx of domestic tourists has been driven by cheap tour price and increased demand. Others believed due to the impact of influenza A/H1N1 spreading in the world, tourists decided to buy domestic tours instead of outbound tours.