Incentives for Cat Ba Tourism in Low Season

The tourism industry is forecast to undergo a very tough time in 2009. However, with active preparations, good traffic conditions, improved service quality and the charm of a primitive beauty, Cat Ba has had a successful tourism season with a record number of visitor arrivals.
From the start of the year to the end of September, Cat Ba welcomed 882,000 visitor arrivals, fulfilling 103 % of the plan and increasing 33 % from a year earlier. However, up to 76.7 % were domestic visitors while there was a sharp slump in international arrivals.
Cat Ba features a primitive beauty with hundreds of islands and is a world biosphere reserve, creating an allure to visitors in Vietnam and the world. With the target of making Cat Ba a tourist centre of the country, authorities of Hai Phong City and Cat Hai District have invested heavily in infrastructure and have facilitated investors to develop tourism projects over the past years. With incentive policies for tourism development, Cat Ba has become a place of interest. This is reflected by the increasing annual number of visitors. The number of visitors was only 500,000 in 2006 but the figure in 2009 was a record of 882,000 arrivals from the start of the year to September 25 despite of the global economic crisis and H1N1 pandemic. The growing number of visitors not only brings in large incomes for the locality but also boosts other economic sectors in Cat Hai.
Due to the opening of the sea route from Gia Luat, Cat Ba to Tuan Chau, Ha Long from March 30, 2009 plus incentive tourism development policies, the district has attracted a record high number of visitors.
However, a majority of visitors were Vietnamese and most of them visited during the summer. During the peak time, restaurants and hotels were almost over booked but they were almost empty at the last months of 2009. This has happened repeatedly for years and has been a headache for tourism companies on this beautiful island. How to attract visitors to the island not only in summer remains an unsolved question for concerned entities.
To solve the quality issues and attract more visitors to Cat Ba, authorities of Hai Phong City and Cat Hai District are accelerating the traffic system, building and improving resorts and entertainment areas for visitors. To serve the growing volume of arrivals in Cat Ba in the coming years, Cat Hai will facilitate institutions, enterprises and individuals to cooperate with Vinaconex Corp to complete the high-end Cai Gia - Cat Ba resort and other investor to build amusement zones. To attract more international visitors, the local authorities have focused on advertising activities. Last but not least, the locality will improve the quality of high-grade resorts, protect the environment and upgrade the traffic system. It will gradually eradicate the discrimination in service charges applied to domestic and international visitors.