Hotels asked to stand by rate cut promise

The Vietnam National Tourism Administration has asked hotels not to break their promise to cut room rates and support local tour operators under a nationwide promotion campaign.

Three to five star hotels in the country need to keep their prices reasonable and maintain quality service to attract foreign visitors to Vietnam, local news website VietNamNet cited the administration as saying Friday.
The administration said it made the request after receiving complaints from tour operators that many hotels decided to raise their rates despite commitments to cut prices.
Early this year, more than 100 travel agencies, hotels and transport operators in the country vowed to reduce prices by 30 to 50 percent under the year-long Impressive Vietnam campaign to weather the economic downturn.
Many incentives have been provided to business participating the campaign, including tax breaks and the permission to extend their business hours for entertainment services until 2 a.m. in the morning.
But tour operators said as the high season for tourism opened, many hotels went back on their word, making it difficult to keep package prices stable.
Although overall arrivals in the first 11 months were down 12.3 percent, the figure in November alone surged 38.6 percent from a year ago, according to the Vietnam National Tourism Administration. The administration expected arrival numbers to continue to go up from now.