Tourists numbers jump during holiday

The number of visitors attracted to popular and well known Vietnamese tourist spots rose sharply during the Liberation Day holiday period, from April 30 to May 3.
Around 500,000 tourists flocked to Ha Long Bay, a world natural heritage, to attend the 2010 Ha Long Tourism Festival (Carnival Ha Long), resulting in hotels, restaurants and tourist services becoming overloaded. The average price of accommodation increased by as much as two or five times, with some even ten times more expensive, compared to normal.
More than 500 boats that service the tourist trade in Ha Long Bay ran at full capacity, carrying almost 5,000 visitors per day.
It was a similar scenario in Sa Pa in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai, where around 15,000 tourists made the journey to enjoy the 2010 “In the Clouds” Festival.
According to the Culture and Eco-Tourism Centre at Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, the number of visitors to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang caves in the central province of Quang Binh reached over 19,000, a record figure for the park since it opened.
Lao Bao and Khe Sanh, two new destinations in the central province of Quang Tri, also attracted nearly 50,000 tourists over the April 30-May 1 holiday. Everyday, between 5,000 and 6,000 people from across the country and Laos and Thailand visited the areas to go sightseeing at the former US war battlefield as well as to shop at border trade centres.
The central province of Quang Nam, which is home to two world cultural heritages, Hoi An Ancient Town and the My Son Relics, saw a sudden rise in the number of visitors with more than 3,000 rooms in 82 hotels and guesthouses being booked weeks in advance.
Other destinations such as Sam Son in Thanh Hoa province, Cua Lo in Nghe An province and the ancient capital of Hue also received their largest-ever number of tourists over the four-day holiday period.